2010 -The anniversary year “2500 Years of the Marathon”
The marathon race is one of the greatest tests of individual endurance, and, in the western world, has resulted in an extraordinary history of physical prowess, courage, foolhardiness, drama and tragedy
The year 2010 is of special significance for the term “MARATHON”. It is the anniversary year “2500 Years of the Marathon”. When you hear the word “marathon”, you may not first think about the city of Marathon or the Battle of Marathon, which took place in 490 BC.
The term has taken on a meaning of its own and is synonymous for a 42.195 km race. The battle of the Athenians against the Persians did, in fact, take place in 490 BC – but the story of the messenger of victory and his run from Marathon to Athens may be no more than a legend, but one that everyone believes! In 1896 – during the Olympic Games in Athens – the first race took place from Marathon to Athens.
Greece will be celebrating the 2500-year anniversary with official festivities in 2010; the 28th Athens Classic Marathon (ACM) will, of course, be celebrating commensurately as well at their event on October 31, 2010. It will not only be an event of the century, but a “millennial event” – that is something that no other sport can lay claim to. You may recall the 100th Boston Marathon in 1996, the Berlin Marathon in 1990 when the course led through the Brandenburg Gate for the first time, or the New York City Marathon in 2001 after 9/11 – all were races with a record number of participants and all were unique experiences for the running world.
The German Athletics Association (DLV), together with the city of Mainz, the Mainz Marathon, the LSB Rheinland-Pfalz and GRR will be organising a celebration of the anniversary of “2500 Years of the Marathon” on May 7, 2010 on the occasion of the German Marathon Championships. 2010 will be an exciting year for running.
The Greek athletics association (SEGAS), the Athens Classic Marathon and AIMS (Association of International Marathon and Distance Races) have produced a joint logo for 2010 for the MARATHON anniversary, which will appear on medals, posters, printed materials and souvenirs at numerous races.
To set the mood for the marathon, German Road Races is repeating an article by Olympic historian Dr. John Lucas, which was publicised in March 2009 on the GRR website.
Horst Milde
A History of the Marathon Race — 490 B.C. to 1975* — by John Apostal Lucas - *Originally printed in: The Amateur Athlete, 28 (November 1957), 10-13. - Part I and II, and available in his recently published anthology, John Apostal Lucas: Teacher, Sport Historian, And One Who Lived His Life Earnestly - A Collection Of Articles And Essays, available at www.eifrigpublishing.com.
It is also a geographic location in Greece—made famous in 490 B.C. as the “Battle of Marathon.” The word “marathon” may be used as an adjective in describing any phenomenon of great length, and it is commonly used in this manner.
“Forty kilometers and then some — a marathon history from Pheidippides to Bill Rodgers”
Greek Antecedents
The marathon race is one of the greatest tests of individual endurance, and, in the western world, has resulted in an extraordinary history of physical prowess, courage, foolhardiness, drama and tragedy. The interesting word “marathon” may be used as a noun to describe any long distance foot race; in a twentieth-century context, it refers to an endurance contest of twenty-six miles, 385 yards.
It is also a geographic location in Greece—made famous in 490 B.C. as the “Battle of Marathon.” The word “marathon” may be used as an adjective in describing any phenomenon of great length, and it is commonly used in this manner. This paper will deal with the history of the marathon run—from its shrouded ancient origins to the extraordinary 1975 Boston Marathon victory of that New England free spirit—William “Bill” Rodgers. The even more perplexing problem of why men and women will spend years of preparation in order to run rapidly and without stopping more than forty-two kilo-meters will at least be alluded to in this document.
Highly-organized competitive sport was invented by the Greeks. Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad, is a tapestry of sport training and competition. Book XXIII, “The funeral rites of Patroclus, and how the games were held in his honor,” is one of literature’s most revealing insights into man’s play and competitive instincts.1 Later in 776 B.C., the Olympic Games were established to honor the gods, to pay homage to Greek warriors, and to emphasize and formalize a way of living that was to characterize these people for a thousand years. Herod-otus immortalized this Greek penchant for sport in Book VIII of his Histories, where Greek deserters, brought before the Persians king, were asked what their countrymen were doing at that time.
The Arcadians told him that they were keeping the Olympic festival and watching athletic contests and horse-races. The questioner asked what was the prize that they were contending for; and the Arcadians told him about the crown of olive that was to be won. Then Tigranes, son of Artabanus, said a most noble thing, though the king thought him a coward for it: for when he heard that the prize was a garland and not money, he could not hold his peace, but exclaimed in the hearing of all: “alas, Mardonius, what men are these that you have brought us to fight, who hold contests not for money but for the honor of winning.”2
The Ancient Legend of Marathon
Nowhere in Greek sporting literature is there any mention of a twenty-six-mile marathon race. The Olympic multiple stade race probably did not exceed three miles. According to history and legend, the Persian king, Darius, attacked Greece to punish Athens for sending aid to the Ionian rebels. Herodotus says that Darius was so angered by the sack of Sardis that, during the rest of his life, he had a herald cry out to him thrice each day at dinner,—“O King, remember the Athenians!” The truth is that Persia was in a full career of conquest, and invasion was inevitable. The first expedition against Greece, 492 B.C., failed; in 490 B.C. the full strength of the Persian army and navy captured the Greek city of Eretria. Then the Persians landed on the plain of Marathon in Attica, prepared to punish Athens.
In uncharacteristic fashion, Miltiades and the Assembly decided to leave the city, march out, and attack the Persians at once. Before they left the city, says Herodotus [ca. 484?-425 B.C.], the Athenian generals sent off a message of help to Sparta. “The messenger was an Athenian named Pheidippides, a trained runner still in the practice of his profession.”3 He reached Sparta the day after leaving Athens. “Men of Sparta,” he is reported to have said, “the Athenians ask of you to help them, and not to stand by while the most ancient city of Greece is crushed and enslaved by a foreign invader.”4
Apparently, Pheidippides (sometimes called Philippides) raced these 150 miles in vain—a rugged route between Athens and Sparta passing through the mountainous country of Arcadia. The Spartans, celebrating their festival of the Carneia, were unable to send their promised help before the full moon, which was probably six days away. Herodotus goes on to relate that during Pheidippides’ return to Athens, he was stopped by the god Pan on Mount Parthenium, who promised to help the Athenians. The Greeks apparently believed the courier’s message and, again, according to Herodotus, sought the gods’ favor with yearly sacrifices and torch races. “After the full moon,” says the great Greek story-teller, “two thousand Lacedaemonians came to Athens making so great haste to reach it that they were in Attica on the third day from their leaving Sparta. Albeit they came too late for the battle.”5
The orator-pamphleteer, Isocrates [436-338 B.C.], in delivering his Panegyric before a crowd assembled for the Olympic games in 380 B.C. agreed with Herodotus on the speed of the Spartans, noting that “the Lacedaemonians in three days and as many nights covered 1200 stadia in marching order.”6
The task of disentangling marathon fact from legend and myth, of seeing through the romance of marathon literature, and of discarding fiction about Greek long-distance running feats is a formidable one. There seems little doubt that a courier was sent from Athens to Sparta … and that he returned with the discouraging message of delay by Spartan warriors. At this juncture—the fate of Pheidippides during and after the Battle of Marathon—is puzzling. Hammond’s definitive study of the September struggle in 490 B.C. tells us little about the Athenian courier.7 Only the singular account of the Greek satirist, Lucian [ca. 120?-200?], some six hundred years after the fact, would indicate that Pheidippides was present at the Battle of Marathon and raced to Athens with the victory message. Lucian was reminded of the marathon story, when inadvertently greeting some friends, he said, “Health to you,” instead of the more correct and ancient phrase, “Joy to you.” He goes on to trace the origin of the latter phrase to:
Philippides, the one who acted as courier, is said to have used it first in our sense when he brought the news of victory from Marathon and addressed the magistrates in session when they were anxious how the battle had ended; “Joy to you, we’ve won,” he said, and there and then he died, breathing his last breath with that “Joy to you.”8
This is the only mention by an ancient writer declaring that it was Pheidippides who raced from Marathon to Athens. If one accepts this story, it must also be accepted that the mes-senger Pheidippides, or Philippides, raced the three-hundred-mile round trip between Athens and Sparta, marched to Mara-thon, and after the struggle, ran himself to death on his return to Athens. It seems unlikely.
Aristophanes [c. 448-388? B.C.], wrote the Clouds in 423 B.C., only sixty-seven years after the famous battle. The Athenian dramatist dwells at length on a certain Strepsiades and his vulgar and dissolute son, Pheidippides. It is unlikely that Aristophanes would have taken the name of the heroic Marathon courier for such unsavory a character as his Pheidip-pides of the Clouds. Lucian had attributed both runs to Pheidippides, but received no encouragement or confirmation in this position. Pliny the Elder [c. 23-79 A.D.], in his Naturalis Historia, calls Pheidippides’s run from Athens to Sparta “a mighty feat.”9 Plutarch [c. 46?-120?] is more specific. The Greek biographer, in a famous discussion of Athenian military prowess as contrasted with Athenian wisdom (called “DeGloria Atheniensium), elaborated:
Again, the news of the battle of marathon Thersippus of Eroeadae brought back, as Heracleides Ponticus related; but most historians declare that it was Eucles who ran in full armor, hot from the battle, and, burst-ing in at the doors of the first men of the State, could only say, “Hail! We are victorious” and straightaway expired.10
Pheidippides—Dubious Double Marathon Runner
There seems sufficient evidence to state that the Greek pro-fessional, Pheidippides, made the round trip from Athens to Sparta, but not the more famous, and shorter trial from Marathon to Greece. Harris relies heavily on Plutarch in stating that the Athenian Eucles, upon returning to Athens from abroad after the army had marched out to Marathon, “ran out to take his place in the ranks, arrived just in time to fight in the battle, and then ran back to announce the victory in Athens, dying as he did so.”11 A “modern confusion,” says Gardiner, has resulted in the wrong man receiving credit for the victory run from the plain of Marathon to Athens.12
Ehrenberg goes further by labeling as “romantic invention” the idea that the same warrior-athlete made both runs.13 Herodotus makes no mention of a messenger from Marathon to Athens—a courier who shouted “nike!” (victory!) with his last breath as he fell dead in the agora. The modern historian, Swain, con-jectured that “Miltiades had every reason to let the city learn of his victory at the earliest possible moment … yet we find no reference to [a] runner until more than six hundred years later.”14 The whole marathon race is commemorative of a legend of doubtful authenticity.
Provost C. Henry Daniel of Worcester College, Oxford, concluded that “there is no mention of the presence of Pheidippides at Marathon, nor of any special mes-senger carrying the news of the victory to Athens.”15 Another scholar, writing in 1908, is of the opinion that Plutarch’s six-hundred-year-old version is correct—that a certain Thersippus brought the news of the battle, expiring after he announced the victory. Lucian, also writing long after the fact, credited Pheidippides with both memorable runs. “A casual error of memory,” on Lucian’s part, said this same early-20th century writer in a letter to The Times of London.16
Noted historian, W. C. Lawson, writing during the Ameri-can marathon “craze” of 1909, declared the alleged death run of Pheidippides as both untrue and absurd. “Even as a teleological myth,” he says, “this is hardly a success … it gives no encouragement to defenders of the heart-breaking long run.”17 Three scholars answered Lawson’s accusation, but were more concerned with the accuracy of Greek translations, proper sources, and spelling, rather than the central matter of a Mara-thon to Athens run.18 Herodotus never heard of Pheidippides, says Professor Lawson, in a reply to his three colleagues. “If, sixty years after the battle, any such tale had been current, surely the chronicler would have heard it from his Athenian friends and used it to gild his rather meager record....”19 Poetic license and nineteenth-century romanticism are the cul-prits in crediting Pheidippides with the fabulous Marathon to Athens run.20
The Marathon as Nineteenth-Century Romantic Imagery
The European Romantic Movement began in the late eighteenth century, continuing well into the next period. The heroic strug-gle for independence by the Greeks, culminating in full libe-ration from Turkey in 1832, created a significant stir of romantic sympathy for the Greeks, and, especially, a renaissance of ancient Greek scholarship. Lord Byron [1788-1824] had par-ticipated in these early struggles and wrote in impassioned tones about the glory that was Greece. Standing amidst the Mara-thon battleground, he cried:
The mountains look on Marathon—
and Marathon looks on the sea;
and musing there an hour alone,
I dream’d that Greece might still be free,
For standing on the Persian’s grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.21
In 1823, Byron set out to join Greek insurgents and died of fever at Missolonghi in April, 1824. Several years earlier he had finished his series of cantos, Childe Harold. In his youth Byron had toured Greece, and he remembered the country as a place of romance and unending beauty. Later, longing for Greek freedom, he exclaimed, “Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most—.” In his Second Canto, Byron is shaken by “gray marathon”:
The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same;
Unchanged in all except its foreign lord—
Preserved alike its bounds and boundless fame
The Battlefield, where Persia’s victim horde
First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas’ sword,
As on the morn to distant Glory dear
When Marathon became a magic word.22
Robert Browning [1812-1889], English poet, had little formal education, apart from a year studying Greek at University College, London. Yet his experiments in diction and rhythm made him an important influence on twentieth-century poetry. Browning’s dramatic idyll “Pheidippides” gives credit to the Athenian foot racer for both the Athens to Sparta 150-mile run, as well as the shorter “Marathon” from the battleground to Athens. The poet pays tribute to Greece and Pheidippides:
First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and rock!
Gods of my birthplace, daemons and heroes, honor to all!
Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron,
co-equal in praise.
“Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid!” implores an animated Browning. The familiar story of this “best runner of Greece”—as Miltiades called him—culminates in a blending of heroic fact and legend:
Unforeseeing one! Yes, he fought on the Marathon day:
So, when Persia was dust, all cried “To Akropolis!
Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the mead [prize] is thy due!
‘Athens is saved, thank Pan,’ go shout!” He flung
down his shield,
Ran like fire once more: and the space ‘twixt the Fennel-field
And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,
Till in he broke: “Rejoice, we conquer!” Like wine through clay,
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died—the bliss!
So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of salute
Is still “Rejoice!”—his word which brought rejoicing indeed.
So is Pheidippides happy forever,—the noble strong man
Who could race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a God loved so well;
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was
suffered to tell
Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began,
So to end gloriously—once to shout, thereafter be mute:
“Athens is saved!”—Pheidippides lies in the shout for his mead.23
Marathon poetry of less epic proportions continued into the present century. Alice E. Hanscom’s “The Mound at Marathon,”24 Fred Jacob’s “The Marathon,”25 and “The Athenian Battlehymn at Marathon,”26 by Sir Francis Doyle, are examples. A recent novel—a skillful blending of ancient history and poetic license—is Marathon by Alan Lloyd. The author calls Pheidippides’ acknowledged run to Sparta “a feat in the best tradition of Greek athleticism.”27
The author conjectures that Pheidippides returned from Sparta and was in the Athenian phalanx at Marathon “wielding a burnished blade.” Lloyd concludes his tale by quoting Browning’s heroic version of the exhausted Pheidippides’ race from Marathon to Athens, the victory cry, and death. This last and most famous story has little historic substance, but is of enormous romantic proportions. Interesting historical vignettes continue to be associated with Marathon. For example, in 1895, a M. Dragoumis found in Salamis a stone which had long served as a doorstop to a peasant’s cottage, and which was inscribed with the epitaph:
Battling for Greece the Athenians at Marathon leveled the power of Persians, wearers of gold. With myriads three hundred here once fought from Peloponnesus thousands four.28
by John Apostal Lucas
*Originally printed in: The Amateur Athlete, 28 (November 1957), 10-13.
Part II
Modern long-distance running or pedestrianism, as it was called, originated in Great Britain in the seventeenth century. From The Diary of Samuel Pepys for the Year A.D. 1663 to today’s countless British cross-country, road, and marathon races, these people, favored by climate and geography, have led the way in distance running.
Marathon Feats through the Ages
Motivated by pride, patriotism, profit, glory, curiosity, and even by personal demons, men (and a few women) have per-formed fabulous trials of marathoning through the ages. Some stories are untrue—impossible, others are without substanti-ation, while many contain degrees of veracity from the pos-sible to absolute fact. The ancient scribe, Pliny, tells of Alexander the Great’s courier Philonides and the Spartan runner Anystis, both of whom ran the 148 miles inside the colosseum, while it is reported that “a boy of eight ran 68 miles between noon and evening.”
Guillaume Depping’s revealing Wonders of Bodily Strength and Skill tells of Turkish foot-runners traveling the 120 miles from Constantinople to Adrianople in 24 hours. He also describes the Abbe Nicquet as the swiftest traveler of the sixteenth century, “who reached Rome from Paris in six days four hours, although the distance was 350 leagues.”
Modern long-distance running or pedestrianism, as it was called, originated in Great Britain in the seventeenth century. From The Diary of Samuel Pepys for the Year A.D. 1663 to today’s countless British cross-country, road, and marathon races, these people, favored by climate and geography, have led the way in distance running. Two English footmen, running in Windsor Park in 1700, covered 22 miles in 2 ½ hours, while a few years later the teenaged Conrad Weiser ran footraces against Pennsylvania Indians. The Secret Diary of William Byrd re-veals an early eighteenth-century footrace of three hours “for a wager of two guineas.”
The infamous “Pennsylvania Walking Purchase of 1737” saw the Delaware Indians cheated out of thousands of square miles as three highly trained white men raced 70 miles through dense forest in an agreed-upon eighteen-hour marathon. The legendary Foster Powell ran the 50 miles between London and Bath in seven hours the year after the 1763 Treaty of Paris. He continued running all over England for the next thirty years. At age sixty, he won a heavy wager for running the 402-mile roundtrip between London and York in five days 15 ¼ hours.
Marathon-like walks and runs punctuated the leisure hours of both English gentlemen and the working class for the entire nineteenth century. Largely responsible for the phenomena was Captain Allardyce Barclay who walked 1000 miles in 1000 hours—a continuous feat accomplished between June 1 and July 14, 1809. George Wilson, a tax collector, better known as the Blackheath Pedestrian, walked 1000 miles in 20 days in the year 1815. John Stewart [1749-1822], “The Celebrated Walking Stewart,” toured on foot Europe, North America, and the Near East. Well-educated and philosophically inclined, the tall and handsome eccentric “refused to have his life recorded because his were the travels of the mind, and his object the discovery of the polarity of moral truth.”
A rash of American distance running performed on horse tracks began in 1824. Hoboken, New Jersey and Union, Long Island were the scenes of dozens of such affairs till the eve of war. The American Farmer of October 3, 1828, reported that a certain Cootes had broken Captain Barclay’s record and logged 1250 miles in 1000 con-secutive hours. The feat was surpassed several more times in the next half century. The American Turf Register and Sport-ing Magazine, during this ante-bellum period is filled with interesting and extraordinary marathon feats—mostly professional affairs.
Joshua Newsam was reported to have won $1000.00 by walk-ing 1000 miles in 18 days in Philadelphia during November, 1830. Perhaps the most implausible adventure is that of the Norwegian sailor—Ernst Mensen—who ran from Paris to Mos-cow in less than 14 days [1831], and a round trip from Con-stantinople to Calcutta in two months [1836]. Sport magazines and New York City newspapers were filled with pedestrian feats during the 1840s and 1850s. Ten, fifteen, and twenty mile races—carefully supervised by officials and gamblers—produced nearly modern performances. Foreigners, Americans, and American Indians were improving records and earning handsome purses. The Diary of Philip Hone, Spirit of the Times, Bell’s Life in London, and many other publications record man’s seeming endless desire to run—for whatever reasons might en-gender the human species to such enterprises.
For some twenty years, between 1870 and 1890, English and American sport aficionados were caught up in six-day go-as-you-please contests. Profitable, exotic, and frequently dangerously exhausting, the names of Edward Payson Weston and Daniel O’Leary became synonymous with running 500 miles or more in six days and six nights. Hundreds of thousands of people paid from fifty cents to two dollars to see the sight. A score of “500” men emerged during the age until finally tiny George Littlewood raced 623 ¾ miles in 125 hours, 34 minutes, resting a total of 16 hours 26 minutes. It was all done in December of 1888, and on the little sawdust-tanbark track inside Madison Square Garden—an authentic Olympian marathon feat.
Both Weston and O’Leary walked on into the twentieth cen-tury, posting significant times even though well past seventy years of age. The unbelievable Weston walked the American continent during the spring of 1910. In England, 1921, George Cummings walked 420 miles from London to Edinburgh in 82 hours. The year before, 81 year-old Daniel O’Leary walked from Philadelphia to Atlantic City in 12 hours. During 1928 and 1929, entrepreneur Charles C. (“Cash and Carry”) Pyle, or-ganized cross-continent “Bunyun Derbies.” The bizarre affairs—well orchestrated to catch the imagination (and monies) of thousands of Americans—culminated in an Oklahoma Indian’s close victory over Joe Salo of Passaic, New Jersey. Nineteen-year-old Andy Payne staggered into New York City on June 1, 1928—90 days after leaving Los Angeles. He collected $25,000, Salo $10,000, eight others split unevenly the remaining $9,500. “The other 45 [finishers] received only a verbal citation for their guts and staying power.”
Edward Payson Weston died at 90 years in 1929—the same year that Abraham Lincoln Monteverde, a 60-year-old bookbind-er, walked from New York to San Francisco in 79 days. By this date, the compulsive South African runner, Arthur Newton, was setting records at ultra-marathon distances—50 miles in 6 hours and 100 miles in 14 hours, and 152 1/3 miles in 24 hours —all when past his fiftieth birthday. During the spring of 1960, two British soldiers and a Russian medical doctor, Dr. Barbara Moore, walked across the American continent. Fifty-year-old John Sinclair walked 216 miles in 47 hours 42 minutes without stopping once; he also walked from John O’Groats to Land’s End (600 miles) in 19 days 22 hours.29
Two years earlier in 1967, he walked 900 miles from Cape Town to Pretoria in 23 days. In 1964, Don Shepherd, another South African, walked and jogged alone across the United States in 73 days only to have his 1964 record broken by 8 days in 1969, by speed runner and British Olympian, Bruce Tulloh—whose 64 days, 21 hours, and 30 minutes remains the record at the present time.
Professional distance runner, Australian Bill Emmerton, has run some 150,000 miles in his eventful and bizarre career. In 1968, he ran across Death Valley, and repeated the feat again four months later. “Man believed sane runs through Death Valley,” headlined the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. In October of 1969, John Tarrant of South Africa ran 400 laps on a track at Walton-on-Thames, England, in 12:31:10—a world record for 100 miles. It was promptly broken by 16 minutes in 1970 by Dave Box of South Africa. America’s greatest super distance runner is Ted Corbitt, a New York City physiotherapist, who has accumulated a tenth of a million miles in 35 years of running. Clarence De Mar, John A. Kelley, John J. Kelly, Nicholas Costes, Browning Ross, Lou Gregory, are other Americans who have probab-ly run 100,000 miles or more. There must be others. One of the greatest runs occurred on November 4, 1973, when Ron Bentley of England ran 161.3 miles in 24 hours, beating Hayward’s record by two miles. That same month, an Irish-born Australian, Tony Rafferty, 34, ran 3686 miles from Fremantle on the west coast of Australia to Surfers Paradise on the east coast to break the 44-year-old world record by 21 miles. He did it in 74 days, averaging nearly 50 miles a day.
In 1974, incorrigible Bill Emmerton ran 21 miles down and then up to the top of the Grand Canyon in 7 hours 45 minutes. Lastly, in March of 1975, a South African Kalahari bushman easily outdistanced a champion distance runner in a ten-miler across the desert.30 Tokkelos, in his job as game tracker for Stoffel le Riche, chief ranger of the Kalahari game park, regularly runs eight hours nonstop, without food or water over soft desert sand and under a murderously hot sun. When tested by a physical education scientist at Stellenbosch University, the comment was made: “Staggering—his potential is simply staggering.”
The First American Marathon, September 19, 1896
The fall meeting of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club took place in New York City’s Columbia Oval on September 19, 1896. Yet the most historic event of the track meet was taking place in Stamford, Connecticut, exactly 25 miles away. As early as August 27, the Stamford Advocate showed considerable interest in this first American “Marathon.”31 World records were broken in the 600 yard dash and the quarter-mile hurdles, but it was the marathon finish that captured people’s imagination. At 3:51 p.m. a woman screamed, “They’re here! They’re coming!”
The cry was taken up in the grandstand. Women who knew only that the first race of its kind ever held in this country was nearing a finish, waved their handker-chiefs and fairly screamed with excitement.… There was a pandemonium of joy. Judges stopped their work; athletes found time to become spectators.32
Pale-faced John J. McDermott of the Pastime Athletic Club had overcome fatigue and poor weather in 3:25:55.6, a half hour slower than the Athens Olympic victor of several months earlier. “The crowd was howling itself hoarse”—oblivious to the slow time—as the first two athletes circled the track and crossed the finish line. After all, history has been made—the first marathon race in America.
The Modern Olympic Marathon 1896-1972
Baron Pierre de Coubertin [1863-1937] conceived the idea of a modern version of the Olympic Games, but it was a French compatriot, Michel Breal [1832-1915], who thought of including a marathon race at the first Athens Games in April of 1896. Two years earlier, at the first meeting of the International Olympic Congress, delegate Breal “sent word to Baron de Coubertin recalling the legendary feat of Pheidippides and of-fering a trophy for a race to be run over the same course....”33 Coubertin’s autobiography confirms that “the marathon race was the creation of an illustrious member of the Institut de France,”34 Breal, the brilliant semanticist and student of Greek mythology, probably had no idea how completely captivating his marathon idea would become.
The world soon read of the Athens marathon victory by the Greek shepherd, Spiridion Louis; little was heard about the efforts of a certain Melpomene to enter this first Olympic marathon race. Her request was refused; accompanied by bicyclists, she nonetheless allegedly covered the 40 kilo-meters from Marathon to Athens in 4½ hours. The Greek paper, Akropolis, commented that “The Olympic Committee de-serves to be reprimanded, because it was discourteous in re-fusing a lady’s nomination. We can assure those concerned that none of the participants would have had any objections.”35
All the Olympic marathon victors and their stories are in-cluded in John Hopkins’ The Marathon.36 The marathon distance in Paris in 1900, was 40,260 meters, in 1904, 40 kilometers, and at the unofficial 1906 Games in Athens the distance of about 26 miles was, apparently, slightly longer than the first Olympic race. The most famous of all Olympic marathon runs was the London affair of 1908. Pietro Dorando collapsed time after time within yards of the finish yarn. A compassionate official helped the semiconscious Italian across the line; Johnnie Hayes was then declared the winner and the western world became acutely aware of the marathon race. The distance of this race was 42.263 kilometers or 26 miles 385 yards. It seems that British officials, desirous of accommodating the King of England, started the race at Windsor Castle and finished at the Royal box in the Olympic Stadium—a distance of precisely 26 miles 385 yards.37
The Queen of England awarded Dorando a special medal; his courage and deportment captured the sporting public. At Charing-Cross station, just before departing London, Dorando spoke to the London Times representative and a large crowd, pointing out the kindness of the English people, especially the Queen. “As the train left the station, the Italian national air was sung with great fervor.”38
K. K. McArthur, a South African policeman, won a 1912 Olympic marathon race of 24 miles, 1725 yards in 2 hours, 36 minutes, 54.8 seconds. The remarkable Finn, Hannes Kolehmainen won an elongated 26½-miler in 2:36:54.8 at the Antwerp Olympics of 1920. Paris in 1924 wit-nessed the 26 mile 385 yard distance, and another Finn, 40-year-old Albin Stenroos, who won in 2:41:22.6. This marathon distance would remain the standard to the present day. Olympic marathon champions, thereafter, have been: El Ouafi of Algeria in 1928 (2:32:57.0), Zabala of Argentina in 1932 (2:31:36.0), and Kitei Son of Korea/Japan at Berlin in 2:29:19.2.
The Games of the XIIth and XIIIth Olympiads were never held due to war. At London in 1948, an utterly exhausted Ettiene Gailly entered the Olympic stadium almost at a standstill, was passed by Cabrera of Argen-tina and Tom Richards of England—the South American winning in 2:34:51.6. Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia won gold medals at 5000 and 10,000 meters, and after several days rest won the 1952 Olympic marathon in 2:23:3.2. The element of speed had abruptly entered the traditional endurance event.
Another Algerian, Alain Mimoun, won in 1956, running through the streets of Melbourne in 2:25. Abebe Bikila, “The Lion of Ethiopia,”—the only double winner in Olympic marathon history—sailed through the 1960 Rome race in 2:15:16.2 and ran a magnificent 2:12:11.2. in Tokyo. Mexico City in 1968 was the splendid scenery for another Ethiopian—Mamo Walde—who ran 2:20:26.4 through the city’s thin mile-high air. The United States, after 64 years of trying, was represented by the 1972 Olympic marathon champion—Yale University’s Frank Shorter in 2:12:19.7.
No pattern emerges except years of hard, intelligent work, gradual adaptation to a variety of external/internal stresses, and the slow apprehension by physicians and physiologists that a marathoner’s greatness is all of the above plus the strong possibility of a genetically inherited talent.
by John Apostal Lucas
*Originally printed in: The Amateur Athlete, 28 (November 1957), 10-13.
Reprinted with permission from: Lucas, John, John Apostal Lucas: Teacher, Sport Historian, and One Who Lived His Life Earnestly. A Collection of Articles and Essays with an Autobiographical Sketch. (Lemont, PA: Eifrig Publishing, 2009), p. 1-8.
Available for purchase at www.eifrigenterprises.com.
EifrigenterprisesJohn Lucas has dedicated his nearly half-century of academic life at Penn State University to researching and writing about his first love of sport, track and field, and the Olympics.
He has attended every Summer Olympics since the 1960 Rome Games and has written several books, including Future of the Olympic Games. From his over 200 monographs and articles, Lucas has selected a score of his articles written since 1953 for this anthology. They cover the range of his academic interests.
