It was awful television and compelling, can’t-miss drama all at once. Just another lonely training run and a watershed moment for female athletes everywhere, simultaneously.

There was Joan Benoit Samuelson, decked out in a matching pewter tank top and shorts, topped with a plain white painter’s cap, running by herself. Or so it appeared to an international audience.

Fifty runners departed Los Angeles Coliseum to the salute of 77,000 at the inaugural Olympic women’s marathon. Three miles in, the 27-year-old Benoit Samuelson — puzzled, even irked by her competition’s collectively conservative pace — spat in the face of the hot, muggy Sunday morning conditions and sped to the front.

She eyeballed the first water stop and dashed disdainfully past. The lead grew to one minute. Then two. The strategy made no sense to anyone living outside Benoit Samuelson’s head. Surely she would hit the invisible wall.

ABC, eager to sell the historic event as a live broadcast with minimal interruption, was left with this wisp of a woman from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and her sneakers smacking the pavement in startling solitude. The only other organisms within camera range were trees, spectators politely putting hands together, and the driver of the occasional escort vehicle.

Twenty-eight years ago this morning — August 5, 1984 — America found its newest darling and made a friend for life. Dave McGillivray remembers the view from his couch as if it’s fresh off the DVR.

“I was watching the cycling the other night with my son and they’re winning by a fingernail. You might think that’s exciting, and I suppose it is exciting with all the strategy and sprinting to the finish,” McGillivray said. “But what’s the real difference between someone who wins and someone who finishes a couple hundredths of a second after? Not a lot in my opinion.

“But what she did in L.A., this son of a gun just said, ‘I’m going for it. Hell or high water, I’m either going to be a train wreck or I’m going to win this thing decisively.’ That takes guts, and that’s more exciting than the other way. It was the most exciting, inspiring, fascinating marathon I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Today, Benoit Samuelson’s contribution to the international running community is the TD Beach to Beacon 10-kilometer race in her hometown. Saturday’s 15th edition lured racers from 17 countries and 44 states. McGillivray remains the only race director the event has ever known.

Safe to say that without Benoit Samuelson’s call-it-crazy-or-call-it-courageous, 86-second win over Grete Waitz on that morning, almost three decades deep in the time capsule, there would be no Beach to Beacon.

Heck, there might not even be an Olympic women’s marathon. Demonstration events have been one-and-done before, particularly those without a perceived deep talent pool.

Joan Benoit Samuelson built the pool. Filled it with her perspiration and her passion. Whether she intended it or not, the teenage skier and college field hockey player who gravitated to distance running by happenstance was a trailblazer.

“I take some pride in the fact that I spotted Joanie before she actually achieved that much and rose to the level that she did. It was way back in 1981 or ’82. I watched her run in a couple or marathons and I just knew. I could see it,” said Frank Shorter, the 1972 Olympic marathon champion who was one of Benoit Samuelson’s special guests Saturday.

“All of us have to think back and realize she was one of the first huge success stories of Title IX. I think it was the best thing ever to happen in women’s sports.”

Only a few weeks before Shorter’s victory in Munich, President Richard Nixon signed into law the act that required equal athletic opportunities for girls and boys.

“At Cape Elizabeth High School I was a freshman or a first-year as we say now when it became law, so I have a lot of memories right here in this town,” Benoit Samuelson said. “(It was) instrumental to what I have done with my life and how I have chosen to live my life.”

Benoit Samuelson broke her leg in a skiing accident during her sophomore year.

Running would be part of the  prescribed rehabilitation. Her parents promised her a gift when the cast came off. She chose a pair of L.L. Bean running sneakers.

Years later, while working a summer job at Prouts Neck and preparing for her transition to Bowdoin College, Benoit Samuelson watched Shorter and multi-time Boston and New York City marathon champion Bill Rodgers compete in the 1976 Montreal Games.

“I was so inspired by their efforts that at about 9:30 at night I took my first run under cover of darkness,” she recalled. “There have been a few since then, but that was the very first time.”

Benoit Samuelson tried playing field hockey at Bowdoin. The legend goes that she quit the team when she was benched after showing up sore from a self-inflicted training run.

While still enrolled at Bowdoin, Benoit followed the footprints of pioneers Katherine Switzer and Roberta Gibb and won the 1979 Boston Marathon.

But she remained relatively anonymous to much of America until winning the 1984 Olympic trial, only 17 days after arthroscopic knee surgery.

Once the nation saw their face on the world stage, we never forgot it, at least in part because it was the only one we saw.

Benoit Samuelson ran into the coliseum and finished her 26 miles, 385 yards with a virtual solo victory lap. Her time of 2 hours, 24 minutes, 52 seconds would have been fast enough to win 13 of the 20 men’s Olympic marathons contested to that point.

She still competes, but now the mother of two adults is best known for furnishing the proving ground for others.

And while Maine’s other few world-famous athletes often choose to exercise their fame and fortune in a more consistent, temperate climate, Benoit Samuelson has brought her childhood home many happy returns.

“You train the best where you’re the happiest,” Shorter said. “When I come back and see Joanie here, this has always been where she’s happy. She found out she could train here. She went off and had all her success and then said, ‘You know what? I’m going to go back where I’m happy now that this is all over.’ And this (race) is the product of it.”

The world is still following Joan Benoit Samuelson.

She remains a big story wherever she goes and whatever she does. And that long-ago excursion through the City of Angels was the last time she’ll ever be alone.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected].