1970 Boston Marathon

The 1970 Boston Marathon took place on Monday, April 20, 1970. It was the 74th time the Boston Marathon was organized, and featured 1,174 official entrants.[1] This was the first edition of the race to have a qualifying standard, as the entry form stipulated "A runner must submit the certification...that he has trained sufficiently to finish the course in less than four hours."[2]

The race was won by Ron Hill of England in 2:10:30.[3] Women were not officially allowed to enter until 1972, but their first-place results from 1966 through 1971 were later ratified by the Boston Athletic Association. Hill shattered the course record, set by Yoshiaki Unetani the prior year, by more than three minutes.[4] Eamon O'Reilly of the United States finished second, just 42 seconds behind, in 2:11:12, the second-fastest time ever recorded for the event.[4] Hill and O'Reilly were the first two runners in the event's history to break 2 hours 12 minutes. Hill became the first runner in Boston Marathon history to average below five minutes per mile (4:58.6/per mile). His course record was broken five years later by Bill Rodgers who ran 2:09:55 in the 1975 edition.