PORTLAND, Maine — Do you think you know a fair amount about Joan Benoit Samuelson? Quite likely you do.
The quick biography goes like this. She grew up in Cape Elizabeth and graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick. Won the Boston Marathon in 1979. Took the gold medal in 1984 in the first Olympic marathon for women. Founded the TD Beach to Beacon 10K Road Race, which takes place every August and has drawn tens of thousands of participants over the years.
Here are a few things you probably didn’t know about Joanie, as she’s known, courtesy of a new documentary about her produced by the Maine Historical Society:
- For many years her father ran a well-known clothing store in downtown Portland. Its name, logically enough, was Benoit’s.
- Growing up and running on the streets of Cape Elizabeth, she would sometimes stop and pretend she was picking flowers because otherwise, people in that era would think it was weird that a girl would be out on a long-distance run.
- Marathon competitors at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics ran for a stretch on the city’s famed freeways, which had been closed to vehicle traffic. Joanie felt most comfortable on that part of the course because it reminded her of running on deserted country roads in Maine.
The documentary the Maine Historical Society has produced is called “Joan Benoit Samuelson: A Maine Story.” MHS focused on her because she was honored as its 2024 Maine History Maker. As the film shows, while her athletic accomplishments are extraordinary, she has never lost her deep and genuine humility.
“Joanie is just such a quintessential Mainer,” Steve Bromage, MHS executive director and the director of the documentary, said. “I think more than anything Joanie is just happy to be a Mainer, part of the community, and a neighbor, as opposed to somebody special on a pedestal.”