“Some people, including of course the men, did not accept that I race at their level. Behind, certainly, but at their level, no, it was too much.” She is Raymonde Cornou. She is one of the first women who dared to run on the road. “I had a lot of remarks, sarcasm that women were made to stay in the kitchen, with their feet behind the sink… And I said: “I have too big feet, I can’t stand behind the sink.”” Indeed, in the 1970s, the French Athletics Federation did not allow women to participate in road races. During her first marathon, Raymonde Cornou is 26 years old and she was simply accompanying her husband who was fired. This breach of the rule has earned him many insults and inappropriate and even violent behavior. “I dared to participate. And the Federation challenged me saying that I did not have the right to run and I said: “But I have the right to run on the road, the road is open to everyone.””
Raymonde has managed to participate in one hundred marathons and thousands of races around the world. In 1978, she was the first French woman to run the New York marathon. Today, she runs, among other things, a shop in which she sells running accessories for women. “Women, we had absolutely nothing because the girls weren’t yet allowed to run on public roads“, she explains. Raymonde also ran her first marathons with men’s shoes not adapted to her foot. “And now, the girls, they have an extraordinary choice, they do not know their happiness. They don’t know what it’s like to put their foot in a shoe where you don’t have a single blister, your feet bleeding on arrival“, entrusts Raymonde.
In 1982, for the first time, women took part in the European Marathon Championships. Two years later, the women’s marathon appeared for the first time at the Olympic Games.