Gorman, who won the New York City Marathon for women in 1977, was the last American female winner until Shalane Flanagan took the title in 2017. She also broke several records in running.
Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked, we’re adding the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times.
Miki Gorman was sitting alone at a corner table of a Magic Pan restaurant in Manhattan on Oct. 23,1976, when her food arrived: not one, but two large crepes stuffed with mushroom and spinach souffle.
A couple sitting nearby gawked at her. Gorman, at 5 feet tall or so, weighed only 90 pounds, and the plates of food covered her table.
“I’m running the New York City Marathon tomorrow!” she told them. “And I’m going to win.”
And so she did, the first woman to cross the finish line the next day. Even more, she won again the following year. No other American woman would take the title for the next four decades.
“We’ve gone so long without winning, I can’t believe it,” Gorman told The Washington Post in 2004, long after her retirement in 1982. “My win was a lifetime ago.”
It wasn’t until 2017 that Shalane Flanagan would end the 40-year drought, crying, cursing and pumping her fist as she broke the finish line tape at 2:26:53. It was no small feat; by that time the New York City Marathon had become the world’s largest race, with more than 50,000 participants. (This year’s marathon is on Sunday.)
Gorman was not around to see Flanagan’s victory; she died on Sept. 19,2015, at 80, in Bellingham, Wash. The cause was metastasized lung cancer, her daughter, Danielle Nagel, said.
Despite Gorman’s accomplishments, news of her death was not widely reported at the time. No word of it reached The New York Times.
If it had, readers would have learned of record-breaking achievements that landed her in several halls of fame. One feat, in 1978, was a world best for a woman in the half marathon, at 1:15:58. She also won the Boston Marathon in the women’s category in 1974 and 1977, the latter victory coming, remarkably, the same year that she won in New York. She is the only woman known to have won both races twice.
“She ran everything, from track races and really quick stuff all the way to these 100-mile races,” said George Hirsch, chairman of New York Road Runners, a nonprofit running group that organizes the marathon. “There’s no one that I know of to this day who has that kind of a range and excelled in them all.”
Her success followed a life of hardship.
Gorman was born Michiko Suwa on Aug. 9,1935, to Japanese parents in occupied China, where her father was working for Japan’s imperial army.
