The Madness of The 1904 Olympic Marathon

The 1904 Summer Olympics were held in St Louis, Missouri, from July 1st to November 23rd. Many of the world’s best athletes stayed away from these games, due in part to the Russo-Japanese war. Well that and the travelling difficulties.

Right from the start it was obvious that these Olympics would go down in history for all the wrong reasons though. Interestingly the American gymnast George Evser won six medals, an amazing achievement by anyone’s standards; more so when one considers that one of his legs was made of wood.

It was of course the marathon though that raised the 1904 Olympics to the heights of craziness. The day of the marathon itself was very hot and very humid, the temperature had already peaked at over 90 degrees when the runners started the 40km course.

After running five laps of the stadium track, the runners were soon faced with a course that could best be described as dusty. No tarmac roads to run on back then. The course itself was marked out by the use of red flags; the runners were quickly followed by news reporters, doctors and of course the race judges. With all these people on what was a dust track created clouds of dust that would have not looked out of place in a desert.

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The craziness continued. The first runner to cross the line was Frederic Lorz. A winner had been chosen, a laurel wreath was placed on Lorz’s head by the then President Roosevelt’s daughter Alice. A problem soon arose when it was noted that Lorz had in fact pulled out of the race suffering from cramps, he had jumped into a car but after riding 11 miles found his legs again and started to run. He later claimed that he didn’t try and cheat he just wanted the adulation of the crowd.

So if it wasn’t Lorz who won; who did? Well that accolade officially goes to Thomas Hicks in a time just shy of 3 and a half hours. This time the crowd weren’t so supporting (understandably) and Alice wasn’t able to put the laurel wreath on his head due to the fact that the winner had to be rushed to hospital immediately. With only 10 miles of the race remaining it turns out that Hicks was suffering badly and it looked like he could no longer carry on. His trainers had other ideas. They fed him raw eggs, they fed him brandy, but worse of all they gave him a dose of strychinine in an attempt to get him to finish the race. He managed to finish it but only directly with the help of his two trainers who all but carried him over the finish line.

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It gets more bizarre. One of the runners was a Cuban postman who had very little money and had to cut his trousers into shorts to compete. His name was Felix Carbajal. Interestingly he decided, while running this marathon, to stop in an orchard and have an apple. The apple was rotten, he fell asleep because of it but on awaking he continued the race with no idea what position he was in. Turns out he was still doing well and he ended up finishing 4th over all. Not bad after a nap.

If you think that was bad, think about the one that finished 9th in the race. His name was Len Taunyane, a Tswana tribesman. He surely would have finished in a higher position than he did but he had to make a rather drastic detour in the race after a dog started chasing him. Not long after this, two of the patrolling judges were severely injured when the car they were driving crashed over an embankment.

The 1904 Olympics were such a farce that the Olympic Committee were somewhat forced to hold an interim games only 2 years later at Athens. It was to be run in a more official way and with clearer rules. It put the Olympics, unlike some of the above runners, back on the road again.

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