Joan Benoit Samuelson and a long list of Boston Marathon champions came together several years ago to form the Bobbi Gibb Marathon Sculpture Project. Their goal? To raise funds to erect a sculpture of Gibb on the Boston Marathon course.
It was Gibb who, in 1966, popped out from behind forsythia bushes in Hopkinton to become the first woman to run Boston.
“As the first woman to finish the Boston Marathon, Bobbi Gibb opened up the door for all of us who followed,” noted Samuelson, a two-time Boston champ and winner of the first Olympic Marathon for women in 1984. “Without her courage and determination, we might never have gained the chance.”
Not only is the sculpture of Gibb, it is also by Gibb. She is an accomplished painter and sculptor who studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the mid-1960s - the same year that she began running longer distances.
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For 50 years, it had been my dream to sculpt a life-size woman runner to represent all the powerful women who have run Boston since 1966.
— Bobbi Gibb
The Bobbi Gibb Marathon Sculpture Project was coordinated by the 26.2 Foundation, which has helped install other marathon statues in and around Hopkinton – all statues of male officials or runners. “We believed it long past time to recognize the Boston Marathon’s great women runners,” says Tim Kilduff of the 26.2 Foundation. “The fact that Boston’s first woman runner is also a great sculptor made this project absolutely unique and appropriate.”
Several years in the making, and drawing on the support from more than 400 individuals and organizations, the sculpture – entitled ‘The Girl Who Ran,’ in honor of Bobbi’s children’s book about running – was unveiled to the public at the Hopkinton Center for the Arts in October of 2021.
It will be installed in Hopkinton near the Boston Marathon starting line once Hopkinton’s downtown corridor project is completed.
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Other Marathon Monuments
The 26.2 Foundation has also played a key role in the creation and installation in Hopkinton of sculptures that honor other marathon ‘greats.’
Spirit of the Marathon
The first is the 12-foot tall statue that stands at the 1-mile mark of the Boston Marathon route. Commissioned by New Balance, coordinated by the Hopkinton Athletic Association (the former name of the 26.2 Foundation) and unveiled in 2006, the ‘Spirit of the Marathon’ depicts Spyridon Louis, Greek winner of the first modern Olympic marathon, in 1895, showing the way forward. Flanking him is a fellow Greek, Stylianos Kyriakides, one of Boston’s greatest underdog stories. Kyriakides won the 50th Boston Marathon in 1946 against all odds, having survived the horrors of occupation of WWII Greece. He then turned his achievement into an opportunity to highlight the plight of his nation, still starving and rebuilding from the war.
A twin version of the statue stands in Marathon, Greece, Hopkinton’s sister city.
George V. Brown Statue
A second bronze statue, honoring George V. Brown, legendary starter of the Boston Marathon from 1905 to 1937, now stands on the Hopkinton Common. Commissioned by the 26.2 Foundation through a state grant and sculpted by local artist Michael Alfano, the statue was unveiled in 2008.
Team Hoyt
The 26.2 Foundation was also instrumental in the development and creation of the Team Hoyt bronze statue honoring Dick and Rick Hoyt, the famed father-and-son marathoning team. Commissioned by John Hancock and titled ‘Yes You Can!’, the life-sized statue was donated to the town of Hopkinton. It was sculpted by Mike Tabor, and installed on the front lawn of Hopkinton’s Center School in 2013, just yards from the Boston Marathon starting line.