Thankfully, some grainy television footage still survives of the moment Nina Holmen led women’s distance running at the European Athletics Championships into a new era in Rome 50 years ago.
It shows the unfancied Finn pulling decisively clear of Great Britain’s Joyce Smith with 200 metres remaining of the inaugural European 3000m final for women on the opening night of the 1974 championships in the famed Stadio Olimpico.
It was the first women’s race beyond 1500m at the continental championships – and would not be included in the Olympic programme until 1984 – and the outcome caused reverberations around the globe.
“Miss Holmen, who is in only her third year of running, scored a stunning upset over the 31-year-old world record holder, Ludmila Bragina of the Soviet Union,” The New York Times trumpeted.
Holmen finished a clear winner in 8:55.2 after hitting the front just before the bell while Bragina overhauled Smith - future winner of the first two London Marathons – with 80 metres to go to take silver in 8:56.2.
Only Bragina had run quicker over seven and a half laps, having clocked a world record of 8:52.8 in the USA v USSR match two months previously.
For Holmen, it marked the high point of a fleeting international career. Earlier in 1974, she also made the podium at the World Cross Country Championships in Monza, Italy finishing runner up to Paola Pigni-Cacchi of Italy.
Pigni-Cacchi, the first woman to break 16 minutes for 5000m and 4:30 for the mile, had been in contention at the bell in the 3000m in Rome, having pushed the pace for most of the first two kilometres, but faded to sixth as Holmen unleashed a final lap of 61.9.
The Female Flying Finn crashed out in the 1500m heats four days later but made the Olympic final at that distance in Montreal in 1976, finishing ninth.
Her son Janne completed a famous European Athletics Championships family double in Munich in 2002, winning the men’s marathon in 2:12:14.
Reluctant Rosa motors to momentous marathon gold
The women’s 3000m was replaced on the European Athletics Championships programme by the 5000m in Budapest in 1998. By then, however, the longest track race for women was the 10,000m, first held in Stuttgart in 1986. The marathon had been on the schedule even longer – since the 1982 championships in Athens.
Like Holmen in the 3000m in Rome in 1974, Portugal’s Rosa Mota was a surprise package over the 42.2km of the marathon distance in the Greek capital eight years later.
“The sparrow-like Edith Piaf of the marathon,” as the 5ft2 Portuguese waif was memorably described by the author Adrianne Blue in Faster, Higher, Stronger, Mota had never run farther than 21 kilometres before when she was reluctantly persuaded to tackle the first women’s marathon held in an international championship.
Unlike the celebrated French chanteuse, she did have regrets.
When her coach, Jose Pedrosa, drove her over the undulating Marathon to Athens course two days before the race, Mota bemoaned: “It’s too far and too hilly. I might die like Pheidippedes.”
Happily, Mota did not suffer the same fate as the messenger who, legend has it, dropped dead after running to Athens with news of a Greek victory in the Battle of Marathon in 490BC.
In sweltering heat and humidity, the diminutive Portuguese woman from the sunny fishing village of Foz ran a canny race on the route that was used for the inaugural Olympic marathon in 1896, holding back in the opening stages before working her way through to the front with 10km remaining.
Mota finished 25 seconds clear in 2:36:04, with Italy’s Laura Fogli second and pre-race favourite Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway third.
The Portuguese runner went on to complete a hat-trick of European marathon titles, also triumphing in Stuttgart in 1986 and then in Split in 1990, as well as claiming world and Olympic gold, in 1987 and 1988 respectively.
Kristiansen’s Stuttgart sensation and Radcliffe’s Munich masterclass
Missing out on marathon gold in Athens in 1982 was not the first blow suffered by Ingrid Kristiansen at the European Championships. As 15-year-old Ingrid Christensen, she made the Norwegian team for Helsinki in 1971 but was bumped off the track in her 1500m heat and failed to finish, a setback that persuaded her to concentrate on cross country skiing for the next seven years.
However, by the time she lined up for the inaugural women’s 10,000m final at the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, she was at the peak of her barrier-breaking powers, the first runner in history to simultaneously hold world records for 5000m, 10,000m and the marathon.
What she lacked was a major title: an anomaly that was rectified in scintillating fashion over 25 dizzying laps of the Neckar Stadion.
Kristiansen won with half a lap to spare, finishing 33.96 clear of 3000m champion Olga Bondarekno of the Soviet Union in 30:23.25, a time that would have stood as a world record had she not clocked a sensational 30:13.74 on home ground at the Bislett Games in Oslo the previous month.
"Stuttgart was a really, really good crowd. Before we started, everybody was looking at the 10,000m and saying that would be a boring race – 20 women running 25 laps – but they started with a wave for the first time at a track meeting and it was even more engaged an audience than Bislett," said Kristiansen on proving the nay-sayers wrong.
Only one woman has run quicker in a European 10,000m final. On a rainy night in Munich in 2002, Great Britain’s Paula Radcliffe produced a front-running performance of such epic proportions that her closest pursuer – a runner of no less a pedigree than Ireland’s Sonia O’Sullivan – was left in a state of shock.
At the 1998 championships in Budapest, O’Sullivan won the first ever 5000m title and claimed the 10,000m gold medal for a memorable double but as Radcliffe hammered away far into the distance on the sodden Olympiastadion track, the poor Irishwoman wondered why she was running so fast herself yet was so far behind.
O’Sullivan later recalled she feared she might actually be lapped but was spared that ignominy, finishing 46.50 behind the barnstorming Briton, whose winning time, 30:01.09, was less than a second slower than that of the legendary Emil Zatopek in the 1948 Olympic Games men’s 10,000m.
Simon Turnbull for European Athletics