It s NY Mini season again, time once more for New York Road Runners to dose us with their annual bit of folk etymology concerning the race s name. This year I am setting them straight.

(To NYRR webmaster, cc Mary Wittenberg)

I am bothered by a preposterous error in your history of the NY Mini. I first noticed this on your site two years ago, and I saw it repeated in this year s Boston Marathon book (in an article by Kathrine Switzer, who should know better).From the current NYRR website: Lebow signed on Johnson s Wax as the race s sponsor. The company which made a women s shaving gel called Crazylegs had contacted him about putting on a women s marathon, but Lebow talked them into a more manageable 6-mile “mini” marathon, named after the miniskirt, then the height of fashion.

Let s get this straight. In 1972 the miniskirt was NOT the height of fashion, any more than go-go boots were. The miniskirt s height of fashion period was 1966-1967. See Time magazine s 1966 cover story on Swinging London, or the 1967 Sonny and Cher hit, The Beat Goes On ( Miniskirts–the current thing, uh-huh ).

New fashions of the early Seventies included the midiskirt, the maxiskirt, and hotpants. All proved short-lived failures, because visually they were too radical a change. Short skirts remained the norm through the Watergate Era, but they were neither new nor fresh nor even referred to as miniskirts.

Cordially, etc.

Addendum: NYRR President Mary Wittenberg cc d this to several people, and in short order came this reply from Kathrine Switzer (first legitimate female competitor in the Boston Marathon and featured model on the original 1972 Crazylegs Mini-Marathon Poster)…

I guess I should be flattered that you think
I should know better aboout Mini skirts in 1972; nobody has ever credited me
with being a fashion authority before! What can I tell you? I was THERE with
Fred Lebow when he and Nina and I created the Mini Marathon, and that is the
conversation we had as we planned and organized, and as Nina and I served as
spokespeople as well for the race. We we WEARING mini skirts (I have the
photos). Fred, in the garment trade, was still manufacturing them; in fact his
apartment, which served as the HQ for the then nascent NYRR was full of miniskirt and dress samples. Perhaps we just thought we were the height of fashion.
Best, Kathrine Switzer