The Woman and the Bay

The Woman and the Bay. . Hamilton's Around the Bay Road Race, established 1894, is the oldest road race in North America, three years older than Boston Marathon. The race remained closed to women for 85 years, until Tersilla Komac came along. Born in Castelfranco Veneto, north of Venice, Tersilla Beraldo had no time for running in Italy. She was too busy working on the farm. Coming to Canada in 1954 at twenty-two, she married Emil Komac and set about raising three children in Burlington., In the early 1970s Tersilla was suffering the painful, but temporary effects of Bell's Palsy, a condition affecting the facial nerve. Sleeping was difficult, so she took to walking to exhaust herself. Seeing runners going past, she thought "I'm going to start running too. Maybe it will make me even more tired." At first Tersilla ran alone, increasing her distance until she wasrunning fifteen miles each day except Sunday. She joined a group of men running out of the Burlington YMCA called The Magnificent 7, and began to run races with them. After an early race in Burlington, organizers apologized for having no trophy for her, explaining that no woman had ever entered before., The 'Magnificent 7’ ran the Around the Bay Road Race annually, so in 1975 Tersilla decided to run it too. Women were not allowed to register in the race, but she just showed up at the start and ran along with all the men anyway, later saying "once it started, they couldn't stop me", (she would use the same strategy when she ran the Boston Marathon). Hamilton police would not halt traffic for her, as they did for male runners, suggesting she had no place among them. Race officials were angry to see her finish. In 1976, running mate Gord McComb successfully registered Tersilla as simply ‘T. Komac', procuring an official number tied to her name. Despite being the inaugural woman to run The Bay, she again crossed the finish line to no fanfare., In 1979 the race officially opened to women, but family commitments prevented Tersilla from running Around the Bay a third time. At the 100th anniversary of the race she was given an honourary First-Woman trophy, and a bib with number ‘1975’ (at left). Today, those who run the oldest road race in North America each March are evenly split between men and women.