In 2009, Lauren Kuntz was a fresh Mt. Lebanon graduate preparing to compete in gymnastics at MIT. Just a few weeks before she was supposed to move to campus, the school pulled the rug out from under her dreams.
They cut the gymnastics program.
“I went into a tailspin,” Kuntz said. “What am I going to do? This is part of my identity. I am an athlete. I want to do something.”
Desperate to find another sport, she emailed every coach at MIT. The track and field coach responded offering to train her in pole vaulting.
Kuntz took the opportunity and entered college with many unknowns ahead.
As she began to learn more about track and field, a major inequality stuck out.
The men on her team trained for decathlons, which are multi-day competitions where athletes attempt to complete ten track and field events. The winner is often awarded the title of “world’s greatest athlete.”
Women have long been barred from decathlons, even in the Olympics. The decision dates back to 1912, when decathlon was added as an Olympic event, but organizers believed the female body couldn't handle the strain. Instead, women compete in a seven-event alternative called the heptathlon or the five-event pentathlon.
For someone as competitive as Kuntz, it didn’t sit right.
After she graduated from MIT, she enrolled at Harvard for graduate school. She also coached pole vaulters and decathletes on Harvard’s track and field team.
“That was the first time I questioned, why can I coach this but I can’t compete in it myself?”
Kuntz decided to begin training for a decathlon. Though most do not allow women to compete, some smaller events will keep the door open.
She found one decathlon that welcomed women and gave it a shot.
“It went so atrociously in my first decathlon ever,” Kuntz said with a laugh. “But, I fell in love.”
As she continued to train, a friend mentioned icosathlons or double decathlons. Athletes complete every track and field event over the course of a weekend. Only a handful of women are on record competing in icosathlons.
With the world event coming up, Kuntz realized she could compete with that exclusive group of women.
“Women need to do this, and I think I can get the world record,” she said. “I’m all in. I’m training for this. I’m going after it, and we’re going to use this to make a statement that this last remaining inequality has to be fixed in track and field.”
Organizers decided to let her and three other women compete in the world double decathlon if they could find sponsorship money comparable to what the men brought to the table.
Kuntz not only found the money to compete in the double decathlon, she beat the American women’s record and came within a few points of a women’s world record.
Getting a small taste of what women can do in the sport kept Kuntz moving.
“I have to give this another shot,” she remembers thinking at the time. “I just want to be a part of this community forever.”
For as much progress as she made, a major setback came last year. Organizers reversed course, determining women would not be allowed to compete in the world competition in 2023.
“They just don’t quite seem to grasp that I want to do what you celebrate as the harder version, as the world’s greatest athlete version,” she said. “That’s the version I want. I don’t want this alternative, second class version.”
The battle continues for now, with Kuntz still committed to clearing track and field’s biggest hurdle for the last time.
“This is the piece of the puzzle that I can move, that I can make a little bit of progress on, that I can hand off a better version of this world, of this sport to the next generation” she said. “I want to do that. I don’t want any other little girl to ever have to fight this battle again.”