PARIS– There was a time, not so long ago, when those in charge of the Olympic Games thought it was too dangerous for women to run a marathon.

In a break with tradition that puts an exclamation point on how much has changed in the past 40 years, women, not men, will have the honor of closing the Olympic track and field meetings on Sunday with the traditional 26.2-mile run.

Organizers of the Paris Olympics are using Sunday’s women’s marathon as another opportunity to mark the achievement of a long-sought Olympic record: the first Summer Games to feature equal numbers of men and women.

In a further nod to the historical significance of the moment, the marathon route follows the footsteps of the Women’s March on Versailles, a seminal moment during the French Revolution when women in a Paris marketplace organized a march to Versailles to voice their grievances about high bread prices to King Louis XVI.

Joan Benoit Samuelson, who won the first Olympic marathon, which was not held until the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, will be watching the whole thing with interest.

“After all these years, all these centuries, women are once again blazing trails that have changed the course of history, and in this case certainly for the better,” Samuelson said in an interview with the Associated Press.

For years before Samuelson’s history-making marathon, women were restricted to races of 800 meters or less. The 1,500-meter race was added in 1972. Arguments against women running longer distances included the idea that they could not handle the psychological stress of long races, and also that the strenuous running could cause infertility.

When Roberta Gibb was denied participation in the Boston Marathon in 1966, she hid behind a bush near the starting line and ran the course.

It was not until 1972 that women were officially allowed to compete in Boston, and it took another 12 years before the Olympic Games were added.

Carey Pinkowski, the Chicago Marathon’s executive race director, said when he began directing the race in 1990, about 5 percent of the participants were women. He said today the Chicago Marathon field is 50 percent female.

In 1984, the women’s marathon was held on the first Sunday of the Olympic track and field meet, not the last. The course started from Santa Monica and ran mostly on freeways before ending at the LA Coliseum.

Samuelson, then known as Joan Benoit, held the world record but was not a favorite as she had just undergone knee surgery. Her main rival was reigning world champion Grete Waitz. Benoit started fast and finished the race with a strong final sprint, running the course in 2 hours, 24 minutes and 52 seconds, making history as the first female Olympic marathon champion.

“Since then, I’ve lived by the motto ‘run your own race,'” Samuelson said. “You can’t run any other race in life but your own.”

At an Olympic Games where Simone Biles, Sha’Carri Richardson and Katie Ledecky have dominated the headlines and a heated debate over gender roles in women’s boxing has made up much of the hard-hitting headlines, the women will be in the spotlight at the conclusion of the athletics competition, the traditional centerpiece of the Games.

“It means most people will be watching while they wait for the closing ceremony,” said two-time Olympic 5,000-meter silver medalist Hellen Obiri, the Kenyan standout who is considered the favorite and is attracting her own new audience as the subject of a documentary called “The Heart to Race” produced by sportswear company On. “It’s a great opportunity for millions of people to watch you. It keeps you busy. I want to work extra hard to make those people happy.”

For Obiri and the other 91 women taking part in the race, this journey through Paris’ history will be anything but a walk in the park. The course is a grueling run full of twisting climbs with gradients of up to 13.5% and is considered the most difficult ever at the Olympics. There were moments on Saturday when the men struggling with the hills looked like they were jogging.

“It’s simply the toughest course ever seen in a major championship and we believe that makes it the most interesting tactical race,” said Jon Ridgeon, the former sprinter and CEO of World Athletics. “I think it makes it more unpredictable for the athletes. It’s going to be a fascinating setting.”

If only the decision-makers of the past generation – the leaders who thought women were too fragile to run long distances – could see what Sifan Hassan is doing this week.

Less than 48 hours after winning her second distance bronze medal of the Paris Games with a bronze medal in the 10,000 meters, Hassan, the Ethiopian-born runner who competes for the Netherlands, will swap the track at the Stade de France for the brutal marathon course.

She also ran two 5,000-meter races, finishing third in the final. If Hassan can complete this hilly tour of French history, then make it past the Esplanade des Invalides and across the finish line, she will have run more than 62 kilometers in nine days – more than any other person, male or female, at the Paris Games.

If she wins a medal, she will repeat her feat from the Tokyo Games, when she won three medals in three distance events. Back then, she ran the 1,500m, not the marathon.

“Endurance on Sunday is no joke,” said Hassan. “Finishing the marathon is hell. It’s not easy.”

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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games