Marathon champion’s perspective on tampon-less runner

Kiran Gandhi ran the 2015 London Marathon while on her period… without a tampon. The story blew up over social media and Gandhi was soon being contacted by all sorts of major media outlets to share her story.

Clara Morris, a theatre performer in New York, penned a biting takedown of the fact that Kiran Gandhi received more media attention than the marathon’s actual women’s champion, Tigist Tufa.

The piece is entitled: “A Response To the Free Bleeding Marathon Runner From the Marathon’s Actual Winner” and is written from Tufa’s perspective. Morris writes that while Gandhi trended on twitter, one lone article on Tufa appeared in Runner’s World (which isn’t true, considering that we here at Canadian Running live-tweeted the event and covered Tufa’s win).

A great portion of Morris’ piece reads:

“In Gandhi’s numerous magazine and blog interviews, she said she chose not to wear a tampon in order to fight sexism and erase the stigma about periods. But do you know what fights sexism in an extremely tangible way? Running 26.2 miles faster than hundreds of men. Literally hundreds of men. Like me. That’s what I did.”

Tigist Tufa is also the course record holder for the Scotiabank Ottawa Marathon, running 2:24.31 in May of 2014. Her younger sister Mestawet Tufa is also an elite runner.