Kate Grace in the final of the women’s 800 meters at the United States Olympic trials in July. “My mother has always made me work harder,” she said.
Andy Lyons/Getty Images
When Kate Grace, the top American entrant in the Olympic women’s 800 meters, races on Wednesday, her first cheerleader will be her mother: Kathy Smith, a leading American aerobics instructor of the 1980s.
In 1984, the first year in which women were allowed to race the Olympic marathon, Smith beamed in a red, white and blue leotard on the cover of an Olympic issue of Shape magazine. In one generation, Smith transformed herself into a successful entrepreneur in women’s aerobic fitness while instilling the value of competition in her daughter.
“Even if I didn’t envision this path, I always had coaches telling me, ‘You can do this in college; you can even do this after,’” Grace, 27, said. “My mom had cheerleading available in high school; she is fitter than most of us, but of course she wasn’t told that. But I was told it, and I believed it.”
Smith, now 64, graduated from high school in 1969, the year that Yale, where her daughter excelled in athletics, began admitting women.
Kathy Smith in the 1980s in a photo she provided. By 1977, she was teaching her own style of aerobics to women in Los Angeles — an athletic departure from the Jazzercise classes so popular at the time.
“There was no tennis, no track, no anything,” Smith said. “It sounds shocking now, but the only thing available for girls was cheerleading. And sure I did it. I think I really tried at it.”
Father-son pairings in track and field abound. Matt Centrowitz Sr., a two-time Olympic distance runner, will watch his son, Matt Centrowitz Jr., the top American miler, race in Rio. The University of Oregon runner Johnny Gregorek Jr. and his father, John, a two-time Olympian in the steeplechase, are in the elite club of fathers and sons who have broken four minutes in the mile.
But contemporary female runners have few such role models. When the women’s 800 meters was first included at the Olympics, in 1928, athletes collapsed at the finish line — and the event was cut until 1960. American girls became widely enrolled in athletic programs only after the passage of Title IX in 1972; that generation of women now has children who can follow their mothers’ athletic lead. Lisa Rainsberger, the last American woman to win the Boston Marathon, in 1985, is a good example: Her daughter Katie won the high school cross-country national championship in December.
But Kathy Smith’s and Kate Grace’s stories have a unique legacy, representing changes in the women’s athletic landscape that have occurred in just one generation.
“This is a testament of Kathy to her daughter Kate, the massive journey that’s occurred in their lifetimes in the progression of women in sport,” said Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive officer of Virgin Sport, who also began running with men around the time Title IX was passed while she was in college in the 1970s.
Smith, in a photo she provided, with her daughters Perrie Grace, left, and Kate Grace at a children’s run in the mid-1990s. Kate said it was her first race.
“It made me really curious about my mom,” Wittenberg said. “There’s no question there are generations of women who didn’t get to pursue their potential.”
Smith was the daughter of a military family in the 1960s. Her father died of a heart attack at 42, when she was 17, and her mother was killed a year later in a plane crash. Bereaved, she enrolled at the University of Hawaii as a business major and began dating a runner. She joined him at the track and would do a lap or two, which soon turned into a few miles. She ran the Honolulu Marathon, as one of about 20 women.
Not everyone was excited to see women at the starting line.
“When I ran that marathon in 1975, doctors would say, ‘This is no good for you; you won’t be able to get pregnant; your uterus will drop; you’ll get varicose veins,’” she said. “I wouldn’t listen to it. But that mind-set about women and fitness was pervasive.”
When Smith moved to Los Angeles the next year, a new challenge awaited. She met the creator of one of the first fitness leotard lines and modeled for her. She took one of the first women’s aerobics classes in the country, called Body Design by Gilda, alongside Jane Fonda and Barbra Streisand.Participants were urged: “Stretch out those love handles! Watch those thighs disappear before your eyes!”
By 1977, she was teaching her own style of aerobics to women in Los Angeles — an athletic departure from the Jazzercise classes so popular at the time. Drawing on her business degree, she began making recordings of her classes and sold millions of workout videos, becoming a regular on talk shows like “The Merv Griffin Show” and the morning shows.
Smith and Grace, in a photo Smith provided, during a shoot for a yoga video in the mid-1990s. Grace now uses breathing techniques to calm herself down before races, she said.
She built what many in the fitness industry call an empire, ultimately inspiring and molding her daughter.
“She would make us meditate or do yoga for our own good,” Grace said. “I would tell her I was clearing my mind — and lie.
“But now I use breathing techniques like those to calm me down before races. I wasn’t able to articulate what she taught me when it was giving me an edge. But now I realize, that’s just because I’ve been doing it all since I was 5 years old.”
Grace added: “With running, you just look at times, so it can always be hard to compare aerobic abilities. But my mother has always made me work harder. When I do push-ups or pull-ups with her — I was an all-American in college, but I wasn’t able to be anywhere near the level she was. She’d tell me, ‘Come on, you’re being a wimp.’”
Smith dismisses her daughter’s conjecture about her potential as a competitive athlete.
“I don’t think I have the mind-set and discipline for what Kate does,” Smith said. “I love all kinds of sports, but I don’t have the kind of brain that stays on task to get really good at one thing. I don’t have the mental dedication, and it’s not something I’ve aspired to. But it’s amazing to see Kate’s journey. We’re all living vicariously through it.”
Grace and Smith were at the women’s soccer World Cup in 1999 when Brandi Chastain celebrated by taking off her shirt — a moment Grace remembers as motivation that turned her into a champion runner at Yale.
But once she graduated from college, she faced social pressure, in many ways the hardest obstacle.
“In 2012, I felt a lot of pressure to immediately excel,” Grace said. “A lot of people I’d been at school with had these pretty prestigious jobs, and I wanted to be immediately on the level of having good results, too. So I started counting calories, stopped eating carbs and went from 140 to 120 pounds in six months. I did horribly.”
It turned out that only her fitness-magnate mother could help.
“My mom never counted calories, and she told me I didn’t need to have extra rules about eating,” Grace said.
At the United States Olympic trials last month, which led her to Rio, she recorded a personal best in the 800 for the first time in three years and reached her first national podium ever. She credits her mother with her success.
“She kept checking on me until this year,” Grace said. “This year I could tell her, ‘Yes, it’s come together.’”
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