Toshiko D'Elia

Toshiko D'Elia (née Kishimoto) (January 2, 1930 – February 19, 2014) was an American Masters athletics long distance running legend. She was a member of the 1996 inaugural class of the Masters division of the USATF National Track and Field Hall of Fame. She holds numerous American long distance running records, primarily in the W75 age division.

Early life D'Elia was born in Kyoto, Japan. As a child she suffered through near starvation food rationing and a controlling male dominated Japanese society. For example, when she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States and asked her father to pay for the trip he said that he would rather spend the money on a new horse than waste it on an education for a female. She met an orphaned deaf boy at a Catholic convent in Kyoto and from that developed a passion for educating the deaf. After graduating from Tsuda College in Tokyo, she could find no Special Education training available in post World War II Japan and came to Syracuse University in 1951 as a Fulbright Scholar. She had a brief marriage to an American, that left her as a single mother in 1955. When she tried to return to Japan with her child her father said that she had disgraced the family and must put her daughter up for adoption, but her mother gave her money to return to the U.S. and start a new life.

Following the publicity of Katherine Switzer's 1970 incident at the Boston Marathon, women's athletics were a new phenomenon. Women were just beginning to explore their limits in running.

Sometimes, ignorance was bliss. You don't know what you're in for.

This period was also the beginning of the running boom of the 1970s. Another Japanese-American whom D'Elia admired, Miki Gorman, had won the Boston Marathon in 1974. Saying "26 miles is for horses to run, not people," D'Elia ran her first full marathon "by accident" at the Jersey Shore Marathon. On a freezing day when she intended to quit at , but her support didn't show up with a change of clothing, so she kept running to the finish. Her time of 3:25 qualified her to run the Boston Marathon in 1976 The following year, she ran 3:04:56, in 1978 she ran 3:04:26 and broke 3 hours for the first time with a 2:58:11 at age 49. For this she received the Runner's World Magazine's Paavo Nurmi Award. The North Jersey Masters club holds an annual race on Memorial Day now named for her husband Fred.

In January 2001, D'Elia broke the indoor world record for women age 70 in the 1,500-meter run with a time of 6:47:46. A few weeks later she broke records in the 800-meter, five-kilometer and 10-kilometer runs.

D'Elia passed on February 19, 2014 at the age of 84.