Speed Was A Goddess First

The conversation about speed in running is often one-note. The assumption: men are faster, women are catching up. This narrative shapes everything from race coverage to record books to who gets taken seriously at the starting line. We went looking for a fuller story. Not in stopwatches or split times, but where stories begin: myth, archaeology, the body itself. What we found was not a story of women catching up, but women there first. Speed has always been human inheritance, with female figures central to its origin story.

The Original Record

One of the first recorded accounts of the fastest human comes from ancient Greece. The human was a woman. Her name was Atalanta of Arcadia. Ancient sources are unanimous: she was the fastest mortal in Greece.
Not the fastest woman. The fastest human.

Abandoned on a mountaintop as an infant, nursed by bears, raised by hunters, Atalanta emerged from the wilderness unbeatable. She outran horses. She defeated heroes in combat. When her father finally acknowledged her and demanded she marry, she set one condition: suitors must race her. Losers would die. Dozens died trying. Hippomenes won only through divine intervention: golden apples thrown to distract her mid-stride. Even the gods knew: in a fair race, no mortal could match her.

Across Cultures

The pattern holds worldwide. Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, had wings on her feet. Oya, a West African goddess, moved faster than lightning. Saranyu of Hindu mythology was so swift she left only her shadow behind. While male gods like Mercury served as swift messengers, female deities embodied swiftness itself.

The Erasure

At Olympia, the Heraia Games crowned female champions for six centuries. Then in 1896, at that same site, Pierre de Coubertin launched the modern Olympics and declared women’s participation “impractical, uninteresting, and unaesthetic.” The 800m was removed from women’s Olympic program in 1928 after journalists claimed runners looked distressed. Victorian doctors invented dangers that didn’t exist. These weren’t discoveries but decisions—reframing female speed as dangerous rather than powerful.

Bodies of Proof

Katherine Switzer proved them wrong in real time. When race officials tried to physically remove her from the 1967 Boston Marathon, she finished anyway. What physiology actually reveals: Women metabolize fat more efficiently at marathon pace. Female muscle tissue shows less damage and faster recovery from ultra-distance events. Women maintain more consistent pacing across 26.2 miles. At 195 miles, the performance gap nearly disappears. The records keep falling. First woman to finish the Barkley Marathons. Women winning ultras outright. Marathon world records broken by minutes. If endurance had been the original measure of speed, if consistency was the metric, if recovery between efforts counted, the record books might read differently.

The States of Speed

Speed manifests in infinite ways. Sprint speed and marathon speed. Metabolic speed and recovery speed. The speed of childbirth, the ultimate endurance event. The speed of adaptation, of continuing, of transformation itself. Our Spring Summer 2026 Race Collection honors this multiplicity through three colorways, each capturing a different expression of movement: Speed as Focus. Speed as Joy. Speed as Grace.

Feminine performance has always contained multitudes. 
Speed was a goddess first. And speed is a goddess still.

Credits
Words + Creative Direction ALEXIS COPITHORNE
Model HOPE SPEARS
Photo + Video JOHN GORY
Styling JESSIE HYMAN
Beauty SARUUL BEKHBAATAR
Movement Direction WHITNEY SCHMANSKI
Art Production LAURA GARCES
Print Production HANNAH KITTO