Joan Benoit Samuelson

Since beginning her family in 1987, Samuelson has reprioritized her life, placing her family above racing. While continuing to run, she put off plans to run in the 1988 Olympics due to the time demands of parenting her two small children, Abigail and Anders. Injuries kept her from the 1992 Summer Games, but in 1996 and again in 2000 she qualified to compete in the Olympic trials—despite the fact that she was almost a masters runner. Her finish in 2000—2:39:59—put her in ninth place, not enough to place on the team but in the top ten, a coup for the veteran runner in a field of much younger athletes. Samuelson still makes her home in Maine, where she lives with her husband and two children. In 1998 she established a new competitive road race in her home state: the Peoples Heritage Beach to Beacon 10-K.