1896 Summer Olympics / Athletics - Marathon (Men)

sport	athletics
discipline	Marathon run
gender	Men
Attendees	17 to 25 athletes from 5 or more countries
Competition location	Marathon - Panathinaiko Stadium
Competition phase	April 10, 1896
Winning time	2:58:50 h
Medalist not forgiven  Spyridon Louis ( GRE )  Charilaos Vasilakos ( GRE )
1900 →

The men's marathon at the 1896 Olympic Games was held on April 10, 1896. It led from Marathon to Athens to the Panathinaiko Stadium . The route thus followed the path that the ancient messenger Pheidippides is said to have taken when he defeated the Persians in 490 BC. Proclaimed.

At that time there was no uniform route length for this competition. It was based on the length of the above-mentioned route from Marathon to Athens . It only changed after the London Olympics in 1908 , when the starting point was at Windsor Castle and ended at the White City Stadium . This finally resulted in the still official route length of 42.195 kilometers.

Records

World records were not set in marathons up to and including 2003 due to the different track conditions. The fastest time run up to a certain point in time was previously considered to be the world's best. This was also still unofficial in 1896.

World best	3:03:05	Greece	Dimitrios Deligiannis	1896

Race course

April 10, 1896, 2 p.m.

On the first twenty kilometers, the Frenchman Lermusiaux, Olympic knight over 1500 meters , led the field. The later Olympic champion was still in sixth place at that time. In addition to Lermusiaux, Flack, the Olympic champion over 800 and 1500 meters, Blake, Olympic runner-up over 1500 meters, as well as Kellner and Lavrentis took positions in front of Louis. So three of the five leading runners had already been successful in the middle distance and are now trying their luck on the much longer distance.

Heat, dusty roads, the hilly route and certainly also the inexperience of the runners on such a route took their toll, so that initially Blake gave up and Lermusiaux fell back. The front runner was now for a long time the Australian Flack. Lermusiaux finally gave up the race at kilometer 32. At roughly the same point, Spyridon Louis caught up with Flack. After both had run about five kilometers together, Louis separated from the Australian at the village of Ambelokipi , who gave up a little later. When the Greek entered the Panathinaiko Stadium, the enthusiasm of his compatriots knew no bounds and increased even further when the spectators realized that the second runner after Louis was also a Greek.

The victor Spyridon Louis was a shepherd, at the same time a recruit and water carrier under Colonel Papadiamontopoulos, who had noticed the tenacity and endurance of his soldier. So the colonel moved him to take part in the Olympic marathon. Louis prayed the two nights before the race and fasted the day before he started.

Results

place	athlete	country	Time (h)	annotation
1	Spyridon Louis	GRE	2:58:50	OR
2	Charilaos Vasilakos	GRE	3:06:03
3	Gyula waiter	HUN	3:06:35
4th	Ioannis Vrettos	GRE	k. A.
5	Eleftherios Papasymeon	GRE
6th	Dimitrios Deligiannis	GRE
7th	Evangelos Gerakaris	GRE
8th	Stamatios Masouris	GRE
9	Sokratis Lagoudakis	GRE
	Edwin Flack	OUT	DNF
	Albin Lermusiaux	FRA
	Ioannis Lavrentis	GRE
	Georgios Grigoriou	GRE
	Arthur Blake	United States
	Iliad Kafetzis	GRE
	Dimitrios Christopoulos	GRE
	Spyridon Belokas	GRE	DSQ

Remarks

• The Greek Belokas had crossed the finish line in third in a time of 3:06:30 h. Several participants later claimed that he had traveled part of the route on a horse-drawn vehicle. He was then disqualified.
• Volker Kluge mentions another Greek named Vanitakis among the eliminated runners, who is not mentioned in other sources.

• 

  Olympic champion Spyridon Louis runs into the stadium

• 

  Marathon runner passes an official

• 

  Spyridon Louis at the award ceremony

Web links

• SportsReference Men's Marathon , accessed July 15, 2018

literature

• Volker Kluge , Olympic Summer Games - The Chronicle I, Berlin 1997 ( ISBN 3-328-00715-6 )
• Ekkehard zur Megede : The History of Olympic Athletics. Volume 1: 1896-1936. Verlag Bartels & Wernitz KG, Berlin, 2nd edition 1970

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ekkehard to Megede : The history of Olympic athletics. Volume 1: 1896-1936. Verlag Bartels & Wernitz KG, Berlin, 2nd edition 1970, p. 79
2. ↑ Men's Marathon on rekorde-im-sport.de, accessed on July 15, 2018
3. ↑ Ekkehard to Megede : The history of Olympic athletics. Volume 1: 1896-1936. Verlag Bartels & Wernitz KG, Berlin, 2nd edition 1970, p. 21
4. ↑ Ekkehard to Megede : The history of Olympic athletics. Volume 1: 1896-1936. Verlag Bartels & Wernitz KG, Berlin, 2nd edition 1970, p. 20