The Profile Dossier: Joan Benoit Samuelson, the Marathoner Who Made Olympic History

“If you don’t have the passion, you don’t have fire, and if you don’t have fire, you can’t ignite anything.”

Joan Benoit Samuelson has been a running champion since the late 1970s.

She won the Boston Marathon twice — once in 1979 and again in 1983. But it wasn’t until the inaugural women’s Olympic Marathon in Los Angeles that she became a legend.

On Aug. 5, 1984, Samuelson won the first-ever women’s Olympic marathon with a time of 2:24:52. It was a celebratory m…