The late Rosie Vivas (née Ruiz), who died of cancer, aged 66, on July 8, 2019, will always be best remembered as the ‘winner’ of the women’s division of Boston Marathon in 1980. On April 21, 1980, Ruiz supposedly completed the Boston course in a time of 2:31:56, breaking the course record by three minutes, and recording the third fastest by a woman in marathon history. She also improved by over 20 minutes on her previous best, supposedly achieved in the New York City Marathon the previous October.
Ruiz, 26, happily accepted a laurel wreath and medal for her ‘victory’, but suspicions soon arose that her record-breaking performance was not all it seemed. She lacked the toned, defined legs of a typical long-distance runner and, having supposedly run 26 miles, in a heavy T-shirt, in temperatures approaching 80°F, she appeared at the finish line apparently as fresh as a daisy, without a bead of sweat in sight. Commentators, including Kathrine Switzer – the first woman to run, officially in the Boston Marathon – who had followed the race throughout, were perplexed as to how Ruiz had managed to pass Canadian Jacqueline Gareau in the closing stages, and rightly so.
Subsequent analysis of race photographs and interviews revealed that Ruiz had not run the full marathon distance, but rather jumped into the race in the last mile or so. However, in so doing, she made a serious miscalculation; instead of emerging from the crowd, unnoticed, in the middle of a pack of runners, she did ahead of the other 448 woman in the field. Her friend, Steve Marek, said later, ‘Believe me, she was as shocked as anyone when she came in first.’
Ruiz was disqualified in favour of Gareau and, to add insult to injury, her time in the New York City Marathon – in which she finished eleventh behind record-breaking Norwegian Grete Waitz – was invalidated after it emerged that she rode the subway for 16 miles after turning an ankle. Ruiz never admitted any wrongdoing and never returned the medal she was presented in Boston.
Remarkably, live pigeon shooting did feature once, and only once, at the Olympic Games, albeit as a demonstration, rather than official, sport. The Games of the II Olympiad were unusual infosar as they were piggybacked onto the Exposition Universelle, or World Exhibition, which was held in Paris, France between April and November, 1900. As such, they were poorly organised, poorly promoted and poorly attended.
All told, eight officially-recognised shooting competitions were held at Camp de Satory, Versailles
and Le Stand de l’Île Séguin, Billancourt in early August, but the Exposition Universelle featured many more ‘non-Olympic’ shooting events, some of which required an entry fee and awarded prize money. The main live pigeon shooting event, for example, required an entry fee of 200 French francs and offered total prize money of 20,000 French francs.
Competitors were required to shoot as many pigeons, released one at a time, as possible; when they missed two in a row, their total number of hits was tallied. After nearly 300 living, breathing pigeons had been blown away, Belgian Léon de Lunden was declared the winner, with 21 kills, one ahead of Frenchman Maurice Faure, with 20 kills, and two ahead of Australian Donald Mackintosh and American Crittenden Robinson, with 18 kills apiece.
As far as prize money was concerned, that quartet agreed to divide the 20,000 French francs equally between them. Indeed, the leading four competitors were posthumously awarded gold, silver and bronze medals in 1992, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) reclassified the live pigeon shooting event(s), such that they were no longer recognised as official Olympic events. Unsurprisingly, live pigeon shooting never again featured in, or in association with, an Olympic programme.
In short, Bangladesh, with a population of approximately 169 million at the last count, is the most populous country never to have won an Olympic medal. Of course, Bangladesh did not declare independence from Pakistan until March, 1971, having previously been part of British India until August, 1947.
As an independent country, Bangladesh did not participate in the Summer Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, Montreal in 1976 or Moscow in 1980, having joined 64 other nations in boycotting the latter in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December, 1979. However, Bangladesh has sent at least one athlete to every Summer Olympics since 1984 – albeit relying, largely, on Olympic wildcard places, rather than direct qualification – making a total of ten so far. Unsurprisingly, Bangladesh has never participated at the Winter Olympics.
All told, a total of 49 Bangladeshi athletes have competed in archery, athletics, golf, gymnastics, shooting and swimming but, on the whole, have underperformed at the games. That said, golfer Mohammad Siddikur Rahman qualified, by right, for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, thereby becoming the first Bangladeshi to do so; he did, however, finish last but one of the 59 players to finish the Olympic tournament. At th 2020 Summer Olympics, archer Mohammad Ruman Shana did likewise, but was eliminated by Briton Tom Hall in the last 32 of the men’s individual event and, alongside partner Diya Siddique, and by the South Korean pair Kim Je-deok and An San – who went on to win the gold medal – in the mixed team event.
The first British female track-and-field athlete to win an Olympic gold medal was Mary Rand, who did so on October 14, 1964 at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Rand led the qualifiers – as she had done in Rome four years earlier, only to capitulate, after two foul jumps, in the final – with an Olympic record of 6.52 metres. In the final, she opened with a British and Olympic record of 6.59 metres, which she improved to 6.63 metres in the fourth round and again, with a world record jump of 6.76 metres in the fifth.
Her winning jump, which beat the previous mark set by Tatyana Shchelkanova of the Soviet Union on July 4, 1964, by 0.06 metres, or 2¼ inches, was all the more remarkable for having been made into 1.6 metres per second headwind and from a sodden, clay runway. Rand later confessed, ‘I didn’t know until many years afterwards that I was jumping against the wind – and that five of my jumps beat the Olympic record.’
Elsewhere at the Tokyo Olympics, Rand won a silver medal in the pentathlon, behind Irina Press of the Soviet Union, who set a world record of 5,246 points and, alongside Daphne Arden, Dorothy Hyman and Janet Simpson, a bronze medal in the 4 x 100-metres relay, behind Poland and the United States. Rand continued to compete but, despite winning a gold medal in the long jump at the British and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica in August, 1966, she later confided, After Tokyo, I did a few meets, but I just didn’t have it.’ She retired from competitive athletics in 1968.