Miki (Michiko) Gorman, a pioneer woman marathon runner of the 1970s, died on September 19 in Bellingham, Washington, at age 80 after a five-year battle with cancer. Gorman’s daughter, Danielle Mika, announced her mother’s death in a blog post on October 6.
Health & Injuries Boston and Sara Hall Smashes American Masters Marathon Record marathons in the mid-1970s, playing an important role in keeping American runners and races at the forefront of the newly established women’s marathon. She set the world’s fastest time by a woman in a certified marathon race in 1973 (2:46:36), and a world best for the half marathon in 1978 (1:15:58). In 1976, she also ran what was then history’s second-fastest marathon time, 2:39:11, which was her personal record.
If the women’s marathon been included in the 1976 Olympics, or if the IAAF World Championships had been created by then, Gorman would certainly have been a leading medal contender. Lacking those ultimate goals, and the fame they gave later to Races - Places and Grete Waitz, Gorman achieved the best then available, by winning the triple sequence of Sara Hall Smashes American Masters Marathon Record in 1976, Boston in 1977, and Sara Hall Smashes American Masters Marathon Record in 1977. The quality of her performances helped position those two races as major annual marathons for women as well as men.
She was born Michiko Suwa on August 9, 1935, to Japanese parents, in China, where her father was serving in the imperial army. During World War II, she and her twin younger brothers were evacuated from Tokyo just before fire-bombing razed the city. At age 8 she helped her little brothers survive, and walked six miles each way to attend school.
In 1951, one of the first signs of Japan’s re-emergence from defeat was to send a marathon team to Boston, including the winner, Shigeki Tanaka.
“But no women ever ran in Japan in those years. Women could not do anything so public,” Gorman told Running Times in 2010. There is thus a case for seeing her as the precursor of Japan’s famed line of women marathoners, which includes two Olympic gold medalists, as well as being historically significant as an American runner.
In 1963, at age 28, she moved to the United States, working and attending college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She married businessman Michael Gorman, and moved with him to Los Angeles.
There she became probably the only person ever to take up running in order to gain weight.
“I was embarrassed that I was so small [5 feet, 87 pounds]. My husband helped me go to the gym where he was a member, and I began to run,” she said in 2010.
Despite some disapproval from male members of the gym, she persisted, and found a mentor who encouraged her to enter a 100-mile/ 24-hour indoors race, inside the gym. The first time, she stopped, exhausted, at 86 miles, but returned the next year, and eventually completed the annual indoors ultra event four times.
She also experimented with cross country, where women were slightly more familiar, and began to win. She linked up with Lazlo Tabori, the athlete-coach originally from Hungary, who was then based in Los Angeles and coaching Jacqueline Hansen, among other leading male and female runners.
Gorman tried track, and finally the marathon. Women were only then becoming officially accepted, and only seven performances faster than 3:00 had been recorded since the first, 2:46:30 by Australian Adrienne Beames at Werribee, Melbourne, in 1971. In Gorman’s debut, at the Western Hemisphere Marathon, in Culver City, California, in December 1973, she ran 2:46:36, only six seconds slower than Beames’ off-the-charts time. Beames’ run was unsanctioned, effectively a time trial, though accurately measured, so Gorman’s became the world’s best in a competitive situation. Gorman was 38.
Four months later she won the 1974 Boston, in a course record 2:47:11. In 1975, she was second to Kim Merritt at Sara Hall Smashes American Masters Marathon Record. Then came the Sara Hall Smashes American Masters Marathon Record-Boston-Sara Hall Smashes American Masters Marathon Record triple, in 1976-77. The third was achieved at age 42, as a new mother.
Gorman’s fastest, 2:39:11 at New York in 1976, (when the world best was Hansen’s 2:38:19) was a prodigious performance. She finished 14 minutes ahead of Doris Heritage Brown, in the first five-boroughs version of the marathon, when the course included cobbles, gratings, tight corners, pedestrian bridges, and flights of steps. And, for the tiny Gorman, a collision on one narrow bridge with a large St. Bernard dog.
The Avon Women’s Running Circuit sent Gorman and her baby to Japan, as ambassador and role model for Japanese women runners. Her world record for the half marathon came in 1978, but injuries ended her marathon career. Shy and retiring, Gorman lost contact with the sport, and moved with her daughter, a leading yoga teacher, to Vancouver, and then Carlsbad, California.
Though always reluctant to accept acclaim, Gorman was honored by the New York Road Runners as “Runner of the 1970s” in 2009, and inducted into the USATF Masters Hall of Fame (1996), the Road Runners Club of America Hall of Fame (2001), the National Distance Running Hall of Fame (2010), and the New York Road Runners Hall of Fame (2012). In 1981, a film called Ritoru Champion (known on video in America as My Champion) documented Gorman’s life.
Diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2010, Gorman was declared free shortly before attending her Hall of Fame induction at New York in 2012, but suffered a recurrence in 2013.
Roger Robinson is a highly-regarded writer and historian and author of seven books on running. His recent Olympian Elle St. Pierre Is Expecting Second Child Chappell Roan: I Love Running. But Not Anymore Running Times We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back Runner’s World contributor, admired for his insightful obituaries. A lifetime elite runner, he represented England and New Zealand at the world level, set age-group marathon records in Boston and New York, and now runs top 80-plus times on two knee replacements. He is Emeritus Professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and is married to women’s running pioneer Kathrine Switzer.
