HOPKINTON, Mass. — There was only one sculptor qualified to capture the combination of pain and satisfaction that Bobbi Gibb felt when she became the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon.Gibb herself.The artist, lawyer and running pioneer unveiled her self-portrait in bronze alongside the Hopkinton Town Green this spring — the first statue of a woman on the historic route to Boston. The work is just a few steps from the starting line, waiting to greet the 30,000-plus runners who will line up for Monday’s race.More than 14,000 of them will be women, following in Gibb’s footsteps.“It isn’t just me: It’s to symbolize women in the struggle to get full human and civil rights,” Gibb said at the unveiling, recalling a childhood when her mother couldn’t get a credit card, serve on a jury, work certain jobs — or run more than 1.5 miles. “I wanted to do something to change that. I said to my mother, ‘I can’t live like this.’”Now 83, Gibb was running as many as 40 miles (64 kilometers) in training when she applied for a spot in the 1966 Boston Marathon but was rejected; rules at the time dictated that it wasn’t safe for women to run more than 1.5 miles (2.41 kilometers). She decided to run anyway.“I said, ‘Ah, if I can prove this false belief about women wrong, I could throw into doubt all the others,’” she said. “This is the tragedy of prejudice: If you’re not allowed to do something, how can you prove you can do it, or how can you even know you can do it?”Gibb took a four-day bus ride from San Diego, then hid in the bushes until the starting gun was fired. As she ran, she felt the support of the other …
