Columnist Dean Juipe: The woman who forgave Rosie Ruiz

Dean Juipe

Friday, Jan. 28, 2000 | 10:02 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@vegas.com or 259-4084.

Her name is synonymous with fraud and deceit. As imposters go, she will always be recalled as one with moxie that just wouldn't quit.

Daring? Hey, she was fearlessly callous.

Scoundrel that she was, everyone remembers Rosie Ruiz.

Slipping into the field for the final mile or so of the 26-mile Boston Marathon in 1980, Ruiz defied not only common sense but standard social graces as she brazenly crossed the finish line and took congratulations as the women's winner.

Feigning exhaustion and fabricating recollections from the race, Ruiz put on a facade for the ages. As late as the following day she appeared on a morning TV show in Boston, still accepting praise for what would have been the third-fastest marathon time by a woman in history.

But the history she really made was as a cheater with unparalleled swagger.

It took 24 hours to uncover, but Ruiz's ruse eventually came to light when race officials could not locate her on the video of the race's checkpoints. It turns out she had started the race and taken a subway ahead, then rejoined the field some two hours later as it reached a finish line surrounded by an estimated two million people.

Newspaper accounts of those two days in Boston are still fascinating to re-read today. There are the early stories that celebrate Ruiz and show her in the winner's laurel wreath; followed by stories of a suspicious nature that allude to her fellow runners' doubts; followed by stories that detailed the clandestine nature of the race and directed the appropriate -- if belated -- respect toward its rightful, cheerful and forgiving winner, Jacqueline Gareau.

"I always took it lightly and never found myself angry with Rosie Ruiz," Gareau said Thursday from her home in Boulder, Colo. "In a certain way, I'm better remembered than I would have been if nothing out of the ordinary had happened in that race."

Gareau is endlessly topical in many respects, yet more so now because this is the 20th anniversary of her victory in Boston and because she is running the half-marathon course in the Las Vegas Marathon next weekend.

She's gearing up to run this year's Boston Marathon and is using Las Vegas to gauge her conditioning.

"Las Vegas will be a good test," she said. "Being slightly downhill, it's a course that's perfect training for Boston. I'm expecting to do well in Las Vegas and it's exciting because it's a race where I can go out and see how fast I can run."

Gareau, a native of Canada who was recently named that country's female marathoner of the century, merits unrestrained respect on a number of counts, not the least of which is her offhand acceptance of what happened April 20, 1980.

"My only regret is that I missed the euphoria of crossing the finish line and knowing that I won," she said. "But the people of Boston have more than made that up to me, and I still get so many letters from people who remembered what happened and sort of felt sorry for me.

"Every year I'm reminded of what happened and I've always been willing to talk about it."

But imagine the disbelief, if not horror, that Gareau and the other women competitors must have felt at seeing Ruiz on the victory stand and taking bows with three-time men's champion Bill Rodgers immediately following the race.

Gareau had reason to be angry if she were so inclined. She actually led the race from the eight-mile mark and turned back the only serious threat to her, when Patti Lyons pulled within 15 seconds of her near the 15-mile checkpoint.

It was Lyons who initially questioned Ruiz's supposed victory.

"I never saw her," she told the Boston Globe that day. "Do I doubt that she was the winner? I doubt it very much."

Quizzed on the same subject, Gareau mentioned only that Ruiz had not been known as a world-class runner and that "she must have had very good training" for the race.

Ruiz, a native of Havana who was living in New York City, was coming off knee surgery and hit the finish line with a time (2:31:56) that would have been the third fastest ever by a woman and 25 minutes better than the only other marathon she had run (the previous year in New York, where she finished 23rd). She played the champion's act to the hilt, appearing physically spent and saying "I just wanted to finish. I felt at the 13th or 14th mile I was going to collapse.

"To be sincere, this is a dream."

There was nothing sincere about it, given that no one saw Ruiz on the course until the race's final mile.

Gareau, who finished in 2:34:26 and was coming off a victory in the Montreal Marathon, had been cheered by the massive crowds as the race leader for several miles. "I supposed I was first," she said of believing she was the front runner, "then I arrived at the finish line ..."

When tapes of the race debunked Ruiz's victory claims, Gareau was awarded the championship and nine days later she was brought back from her home in Montreal to re-enact crossing the finish line. There, she was greeted by Massachusetts' governor, taken on a tour of the city in his limousine, made a stop at the Cheers tavern and honored at a private dinner at the Sheraton-Boston Hotel.

Gareau was as gracious then as she is today.

"I couldn't be angry the day of the race because I'd just had a great run," she said. "And what happened that day allows me to still be recognized. I've been celebrated everywhere as a first-class athlete with a wonderful spirit of sportsmanship. That kindness has touched me so much."

Now 46 years old, she's married and has a 7-year-old son. While saying "I still love to run," she refers to herself as "semi-retired" and competes only on rare occasions.

The 20th anniversary of her Boston victory is her incentive for taking part in the Las Vegas race a week from Sunday.

Her best time for a half-marathon is 1:13:16 and she expects to run 1:17:30 here.

But no matter where she finishes or how she does, her standing among her peers and within the sports community is secure. She will always be a champion.