A new season for Starting Line 1928 begins with interviews of two legendary female athletes road runner and administrator Nina Kuscsik and racewalker Yolanda Holder.
Nina Kuscsik (1939 – 2025):
Generations of women runners owe a debt of gratitude for the years of tireless work Nina did in opening doors for women to officially compete in long distance running.
In 1972, she became the first woman to officially win the Boston Marathon. Nina became the second American woman to complete a marathon in under three hours. Her time of 2:56:04 at the 1971 New York City Marathon was second to Beth Bonner’s 2:55:22.
Yolanda Holder (1958):
I consider Yolanda to be the greatest African American female endurance athlete of all-time. She has set many records and remains competitive today at age 67.
In 2017 at the age of 59, she completed the longest footrace in the world covering 3100 miles in 51 days, 17 hours, and 13 seconds. She’s the only participant in the 29-year history of this event to walk the entire distance.
In 2019, Yolanda became American Centurion #94 having walked 100 miles in under 24 hours. She did this in 23 hours, 51 minutes, and 32 seconds. This requires a walking pace of under 14 minutes, 24 seconds per mile.
Listen and learn more about these two remarkable athletes along with many other women pioneers here:
https://startingline1928.libsyn.com/site
The Starting Line 1928 Project has produced 56 podcasts and is uniquely focused on early women’s running history including Black female long-distance runners who had been largely ignored until now.
Gary Corbitt
Archivist: Theodore Corbitt Institute for Running History Research
www.tedcorbitt.com
Historian: National Black Marathoners Association
October 2025