Imagine a record-setting distance runner. This marathoner you envisage should be a history maker. The fastest in the world, by a long margin. Concentrate. Got a picture in mind?

Is she four-feet-10 inches tall? Is she 13 years old? Is she Canadian? Is her name Maureen Wilton?

May 6, 1967. Three hours 15 minutes and 23 seconds. Maureen Wilton, now Maureen Mancuso, ran the fastest 42.2 kilometres by a female. She knocked more than four minutes off the previous world record. She is the only Canadian ever to own a marathon world best. It would be hard to prove, but they say Mancuso that day ran the longest distance any Canadian woman had ever run, period. She was also the youngest record holder. In fact, she was too young for the record keepers in that day and age.

You can be forgiven for not knowing Mancuso’s story, because her incredible run happened almost 50 years ago. But what if you had been there, back in the Summer of Love? Did Canadians celebrate her achievement? Did young Maureen get to ride Yonge Street on the back deck of a convertible, waving to adoring fans? Was she showered with rewards, our very own world beater?

She was not.

Mancuso got bupkes.

Muted mention in the media. No prize money. Not even an assembly at her school. Her coach was scolded by athletics officials. Her mom and dad were accused of putting their child in harm’s way.

Seen through modern eyes, the reaction to Mancuso’s marathon was cruel and cold. It left a marvelous young athlete feeling confused, and almost furtive about her accomplishment. It is hard to overstate how different the response to her run would be in today’s world, where tens of thousands of people — more women than men — show up for weekend marathons. At the very least, the women who run by the blockful today, owe some of their endurance sisterhood to a quiet act of defiance by that very young woman, back in Canada’s summer of Expo.

It feels strange now, the skepticism that shrouded marathon running 50 years ago. And it is downright gruesome to revisit the sexism that was so pervasive in athletics then. Taken together, those two attitudes make Mancuso’s breakthrough even more unlikely.

There was nothing in the air back then that would seem to encourage or prompt a diminutive young girl from Willowdale, Ont., to set out to obliterate a world marathon record...and yet.