Arlene Val Richter was born on March 18, 1930, later known as Arlene Pieper Stine, the first woman to officially finish a sanctioned U.S. marathon.
Arlene Val Richter was born on March 18, 1930. She grew up in an era when organized athletic competition for women was severely limited, with prevailing medical and cultural attitudes discouraging females from participating in endurance sports such as distance running.
Little formal documentation exists of her earliest years, but she would go on to settle in Colorado, where she became involved with fitness and health promotion, eventually opening a health studio in Colorado Springs. It was through this connection to physical fitness culture, and her marriage to Wesley Paul (a race organizer associated with the Pikes Peak Marathon), that Arlene found her way into the sport that would define her historical legacy.
Her birth date marks the beginning of a life that would, three decades later, produce one of the quiet but pivotal breakthroughs in the history of American women's distance running. At a time when women were widely believed to be physiologically incapable of running long distances, and were formally barred from most competitive marathon events, Arlene Richter's upbringing in mid-20th-century America gave no indication of the trailblazing role she would eventually play in Sports history.
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