Nina Kuscsik
In this episode, you will hear an interview with Nina Kuscsik done by Amy Begley as part of the Road Runners Club of America oral history project. It was recorded by phone in 2013. Kuscsik passed away this previous summer of 2025.
Waldniel, Germany 1974 - Nina is bib 204.
In June of 1970, Nina Kuscsik went to sign up for a two-mile race in Van Cortland Park, New York, but was turned away because it was for men only. She was shocked. By that point in her running career, she had already unofficially jumped into the Boston Marathon twice and had officially run the 1970 Cherry Tree Marathon in the Bronx, New York. Being turned away from a two-mile race due to gender was an epiphanal moment for her.
“I was outraged,” said Kuscsik. “There was nothing on the entry form that said no women allowed.” She argued with the organizers to no avail. That day, a rebel was born.
Nina Louise Kuscsik was born in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn in 1939. “We played in the street all day long,” she recalls. “I was reckless and had no limitations.” While other teenage girls were hanging out with boys, Nina was having none of that. She considered it a waste of time. She wanted to be active every minute of the day.
In 1954, she read about Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile and was astounded that someone could run that fast. Inspired, she rode her bike to a local track and ran one lap in 1:25. But she didn’t think she was fast enough to become a “real” runner.
In 1955 she graduated high school. When her guidance counselor asked about her plans, she said she wanted to be a nurse. The counselor advised her to clean her dirty fingernails and improve her appearance if she wanted to be accepted into nursing school. The rebel in her replied, “I work mornings and afternoons at a cookie factory and that isn’t dirt under my fingernails - it’s cookie dough.”
While attending nursing school, Kuscsik stayed active in sports, adding ice speed skating and bike racing to her roller speed skating. In 1960 she became the New York State champion in all three.
After becoming a mother of three, she decided to give up sports. She pushed the baby carriage, made dinners for the family, and cheered for her husband at his softball games. But that didn’t last. She couldn’t bear being a spectator and not a participant. She went back to skating and biking–until a flat tire changed the course of her life.
Yonkers Marathon in 1979
In 1965, while waiting for a replacement tire that had to be ordered through a catalogue, she read Bill Bowerman’s Jogging and her world changed once again.
Kuscsik took up running and started training seriously for the 1969 Boston Marathon, even though it was not officially open to women. Inspired by Bobbi Gibb and Sara Mae Berman, who had jumped into the race in previous years, she decided to do the same. She blended into the crowd of male runners finishing in 3:46. She went home, thinking her running career was over and started to re-wallpaper her kitchen. But the marathon bug had taken hold.
She ran Boston again in 1970 and 1971. In 1972, the first year the Boston Marathon officially accepted women, she won, finishing in 3:10:26.
During the 1970s, Kuscsik likely ran more marathons than any other woman. In 1971 she attended the AAU’s annual conference and presented a proposal to end the ban on women’s allowed distances. The committee agreed to increase the maximum allowable distance in AAU-sanctioned women’s events from five to ten miles and added a clause allowing certain women to run marathons. But the rules still required a separate start for women.
At the start of the 1972 New York City Marathon, eight women, including Kuscsik, staged a protest against the separate start rule. They sat down at the starting line while the press covered the sit-in. Ten minutes after the men’s start, the women got up and ran. Kuscisk won in 3:08:42.
The protest caught the attention of the AAU and the ban on separate starts was stricken. It was a major victory–but there was still one more hurdle ahead: There was still no Olympic Marathon for women.
In 1976, Kuscsik delivered a lecture on the history of women’s marathon running at a sports-medicine conference sponsored by the New York Academy of Science. Afterward, the Academy unanimously approved a resolution supporting an Olympic Marathon for women. Kuscsik continued to advocate for its inclusion and in 1984 she witnessed Joan Benoit become the first woman to win an Olympic Marathon.
By the time she retired from running, Kuscsik had run more than 80 marathons, winning 15, and had become the most respected woman runner and advocate for women’s rights in sports. At her memorial, her son Steven reflected on her life. He remembered how, after driving the three kids home from yet another race in Central Park, she never spoke about her wins, her times, or her trophies.
“She just had a big smile on her face and said she ran for the pure pleasure of it. She simply loved the freedom that running gave her.”
Note about the author: Gail Waesche Kislevitz is an award-winning journalist and the author of six books on running and sports. She was a columnist for Runner’s World for fifteen years and her freelance work has appeared in Shape, Marathon and Beyond, and New York Runner.
