41 years ago today, Dick Beardsley won the inaugural London Marathon with Inge Simonson

(KDLM) – March 29, 2022, marks the 41-year anniversary of the inaugural London Marathon, and a very special race for Minnesota’s Dick Beardsley.

“I was contacted by race director Chris Brasher, who was also a European distributor for New Balance,” Beardsley told KDLM. “They were looking for an American to run in the race. I had never been outside the US or Canada before, so I jumped at the opportunity to compete over there.”

Beardsley was one of only 7,000 racers in the inaugural race, out of more than 23,000 runners that applied to run.

“Only seven thousand runners in the London Marathon is crazy to think about,” said Beardsley. “Today, there are 45,000 runners in that race.”

Beardsley broke away from the main group of runners around the 16-mile mark with Norweigen Inge Simonson, and the two of them competed shoulder-to-shoulder for the last ten miles of the race.

“Inge and I were duking it out from the halfway point of the race,” remembers Beardsley. “I was doing everything I could do to break away from Inge, and he was trying to break away from me. We get to the last couple hundred meters, and we’re sprinting toward the finish line, and at the last moment Inge reached over and grabbed my hand and we crossed the finish line together with our arms up. It was a dead tie.”

Simonson and Beardsley were both credited with the London Marathon victory with a winning time of two hours, 11 minutes, and 48 seconds.

Happy birthday, @dickbeardsley, who will be forever immortalised in London Marathon history after winning the very first edition in 1981, crossing the line hand in hand with Inge Simonsen in a time of 2:11:48 ❤️

What a moment! 🤩#LondonMarathon pic.twitter.com/zI9qLLGbDV

— TCS London Marathon (@LondonMarathon) March 21, 2022

“We were both awarded the win. For both of us, it was the first time either of us had won a full marathon. And 40 years later, Inge and I are still really good friends. We had never met before London.”

“Dick asked me with about a mile to go,” Simonson recalled in a 2015 interview. “All along both of us had been trying to pull away without success. I realized that it would be a very tight finish. So I decided it would be a great idea to finish in a tie for the first London Marathon. Still today I think it was a great start for the London Marathon. The pictures of me and Dick at the finishing line have been used to promote the London Marathon ever since and it symbolizes great sportsmanship.”

Beardsley followed up his London Marathon race by winning the 1981 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, setting a course record that was stand for the next 33 years.