Benoit, Joan (Mrs. Samuelson)
Track and field
b. May 16, 1957, Cape Elizabeth, ME
After breaking a leg skiing as a youngster, Benoit began running to get back into shape and discovered that she liked it. While a senior at Bowdoin College in Maine, she entered the 1979 Boston Marathon as a virtual unknown and set an American women's record of 2:35:15.
Benoit underwent surgery on both Achilles tendons in 1981 but returned to top form in 1983, when she again won the Boston Marathon, setting a world record of 2:22:43. She also set American records that year in the 10-kilometer, half-marathon, 10-mile and 25-kilometer runs.
Grete Waitz of Norway, who had won all seven marathons she'd entered and had beaten Benoit in 10 of 11 races, was favored to win the gold medal in the first Olympic women's marathon in 1984. However, Benoit took the lead just 3 miles into the race and never gave it up. She led Waitz by nearly a minute at the 15-kilometer mark and by nearly two minutes at the 25-kilometer mark.
She recalled, "When I came into the stadium and saw all the colors and everything, I told myself, 'Listen, just look straight ahead, because if you don't you're probably going to faint.'"
Benoit was named winner of the Sullivan Award as the outstanding U. S. amateur athlete of 1985, when she set an American record of 2:21:21 in the Chicago Marathon. She also won major 12-kilometer and 7-mile races that year.
Since then, she's been seriously hampered by injuries and has struggled to finish in the top ten in most of the races she's entered. She finished 13th in the 1996 Olympic marathon trials with a time of 2:36.54, which would have put her the team in 1984 or 1988.