November 8, 2018
Contact: Jeff Darman 
               (610.925.1976)
               (610.299.4436 Cell)
               jdarman@rrm.com  

Jacqueline Hansen will receive the annual MarathonFoto/Road Race Management Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 Road Race Management Race Directors' Meeting November 9 in St. Petersburg, FL. The award is made for contributions to the sport of long distance road running over the course of a lifetime. Scores of nominations were received that read like a Who's Who of running. The 10-member committee had the difficult task of reviewing the nominees.

Nominator Mark Wintz said of her, "Jacqueline Hansen is a life-long innovator in the sport. She was instrumental in gaining women the opportunity to compete in long-distance races." Phil Stewart, Road Race Management President, added, "Today with well over 50% participation numbers at running events being women it is hard to imagine there was a time when women were banned from running events. This year's Lifetime Achievement Award winner was one of a small band of women who pushed the envelope for inclusion for herself and for all women. She was instrumental in gaining women the opportunity to compete in long-distance races. As President of the International Runners Committee, she and the group lobbied and cajoled the running establishment to include the women's marathon in the Olympic Games. She spearheaded an international class action lawsuit against the IOC to gain the 5,000 and 10,000-meter races for women in the Games as well."

Perhaps Joan Benoit Samuelson said it best in the foreword of our winner's book. "With the first Olympic Marathon for women now 30 years past, I am sometimes referred to as a ‘pioneer' for having won that gold medal. . . . But (I) gently point out. . . that our inaugural race was made possible by the efforts. . . of earlier women marathoners. They broke down the barriers of intolerance and indifference, starting long before 1984."

In 1973 Hansen won the Boston Marathon. In 1975 she became the first woman to go below 2:40, winning the Nike-Oregon Track Club Marathon in 2:38:19. Only two months later she won the Honolulu Marathon in course record time. In 1978 Hansen set several American records at the 50-mile AAU Championship track race. She also, at age 36, qualified for the 1984 Olympic Marathon Trials for women.

Hansen was a volunteer coach for Team Diabetes for seven years and continues to do private coaching. She was Athletic Director, Health and P.E. teacher, and Track & Field and Cross County coach at St. Monica H.S., and she was an Associate Athletic Director at the Brentwood School. She completed her teaching credential and Masters degree in Education at Loyola Marymount University.

She has received various awards, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California Annual Award for Leadership, and a USATF Annual Recognition Award as "Woman of the Year." She is a Road Runners Club of America Hall of Fame inductee and a member of the Cal State Northridge Hall of Fame in 1988. In 2012, she was inducted into the USA National Distance Running Hall of Fame. In 2013, on her 40th anniversary of winning the Boston Marathon, she was the official starter for the women's elite field. In 2014, she was awarded the Women's Trailblazer Award by Running USA, and in 2015 she was awarded the Joseph Robichaux Award by USATF Women's Track and Field.

As a writer, she has been published in: Women's Sports, Runners' World, Running, and Running Times, and she wrote chapters in The Complete Woman Runner and The Complete Marathoner.