Jogging comes from the English TO JOG, meaning to go forward in leaps and bounds, and it is believed that running at a pace of more than six minutes per kilometer is jogging.

Jogging has not always existed, and while treadmills were used to punish prisoners, those few who ran in the streets and parks were mostly considered out of their minds and some even fined by the police for improper use of the sidewalk.

Then since the 1960s someone invented the sport, and this is the documented history of the birth of the culture of an activity under the banner of freedom.

You are indeed the one who decides, you are free with the universe, no one tells you what to do.

But it was exclusive to men, women were not allowed to run, at the Olympic venue a maximum of 800 meters. In fact, it was believed that by running you could detach your uterus, become infertile, would grow chest hair and lose your grace.

Only Catherine Switzler, with her father urging her to run and train managed to get on the track and field team succeeded in registering for the 1967 Boston Marathon by circumventing the ban on women's participation: the athlete, in fact, registered as K.V. Switzer, indicating, that is, only the initials of her first and middle names. She obtained bib number 261.

Once they realized the fact, the race judges tried to prevent her from continuing, yanking her to force her off the track with three kilometers to go. Switzer, however, managed to resist the attempted exclusion (aided by her boyfriend, who was also entered in the competition and protected her from the assault) and completed the race in a time of 4 hours and 20 minutes.

It was precisely the violent reaction of the organizers that sparked a movement of opinion that led to the opening of the Boston Marathon to women in 1972 , whereas the year before, in 1971, female marathoners had already been admitted to the New York competition.

After the Boston exploit, Kathrine Switzer became actively involved in promoting women's participation in marathons organized in various countries around the world. She herself took part in more than thirty such competitions, even managing to win the New York Marathon in 1974.

The growth of the women's marathon athletic movement then led to its subsequent introduction as an Olympic specialty in 1984 at the Los Angeles Olympics.

The documentary also tells the story of the birth of Spiridon magazine in the 1970s, a publication brought about by the need of friends, athletics and running enthusiasts who wanted to share sports passions and especially popular running races.

A magazine under the banner of nature ethics, women's rights and free and anarchic sports, it would no longer recognize its function when it entered the sprawling world of business.

Figures like Frank Shorter and Fred Lebow who came from the fashion world become the joggers who run through the streets of New York to give hope to a country close to bankruptcy, it is 1976 and America was experiencing a major crisis. Steve Prefontaine, a track star manages to hold all the records while still continuing to live in a trailer because he was not making any money despite the fact that others around him were making colossal income. It starts from wearing the sneakers of a small company of only 15 employees-Nike.

A rebel, this man, fighting for athletes' rights and their independence from federations, called the James Dean of running, dies at age 24 in a car accident.

The documentary does not shy away from exposing the practice of under-the-table and thus exposes the hypocrisy of the Federations, which Frank Lebow denounces in a book that costs him dearly.

And if women in the 1980s acquire the right to race albeit in small numbers, one brand decides on a race reserved for women, the Women Race, despite all prejudice.

Very poor women in the third world understood what it meant to have access to courage and empowerment, and the possibility of the Olympics was opened to them.

Joan Benoit wins the gold medal at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the year the women's marathon was first introduced at the Olympics.

It gets up to 34 million Americans jogging and that produces a frightening circulation of money including marathon tourism around the world.

And that sport that was born under the banner of freedom and gratuitousness comes to move hundreds of millions of dollars so much so that it determines the need for a show that should be guaranteed in spite of everyone and in spite of everything like Hurricane Sandy in November 2012.

So it is that from that need for free outdoor activity that the documentary exposes the dark side of a practice of the wealthier classes incorporated into the vicious circle of business.

Pierre Morath, a passionate runner, manages to unravel the skein of an activity that was born during the years of protest as a symbol of freedom, to become the gravitational center of a colossal industry of federations, brands, magazines, supplements, and sports tourism.

His ability to make this phenomenon a reflection of a radical social transformation is this director's great merit; from the rights he has brought about, the countless sacrifices he has seen made, the glories, the accolades, the social, cultural, political changes to the market analysis that all this has inevitably brought about.

23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice