1904 Summer Olympics / Athletics - Marathon (Men)
sport | athletics | ||||||||
discipline | Marathon run | ||||||||
gender | Men | ||||||||
Attendees | 38 athletes from 5 countries | ||||||||
Competition location | Francis Field | ||||||||
Competition phase | August 30, 1904 | ||||||||
Winning time | 3:28:53 h | ||||||||
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The men's marathon at the 1904 St. Louis Olympic Games was held in St. Louis on August 30, 1904. 38 athletes took part, 14 of whom finished the race.
The US athletes were able to celebrate a triple victory. Thomas Hicks won ahead of Albert Corey and Arthur Newton .
Records
In the marathon there were no official world records until 2003 , there were unofficial world best times.
World best | 2: 29: 23.6 h | Canada | James Caffery | 1901 | ran over 39 km |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Olympic record | 2:58:50 h | Greece | Spyridon Louis | 1896 |
Note on the marathon distance:
An agreement on the length of the route was only reached in 1921, when the IOC set the distance for the marathon of the 1908 Olympic Games in London as a binding length of 42.195 km.
Results
Course of the competition
The marathon was officially 40 kilometers or 24.85 miles, but it was probably almost 2 kilometers longer. At 3:08 p.m., 32 runners tackled the route that ran through the suburbs of St. Louis to the north of the stadium. The racing conditions were tough: the extremely hilly track (seven inclines with 30 to 100 meters difference in altitude) led over unpaved roads with a layer of dust several centimeters thick. Accompanying cars and horses also raised dust, causing many runners to suffer from severe coughing cramps. Although the temperatures were consistently above 32 ° C (90 ° F), only a single water point was available. In the course of the race there were numerous changes at the top, the individual runners were sometimes very far apart. After about halfway through, Thomas Hicks took the lead and finally reached the finish line after almost three and a half hours. Only 14 runners managed the entire route.
Hicks' victory run gives an insight into the lack of sports medicine knowledge at the time. On the advice of his companions, he was not allowed to drink water, only to rinse his mouth with distilled water. At about 28 km he received a milligram of strychnine with an egg white . At kilometer 32 there was a second protein with strychnine and a sip of brandy . In addition, his whole body was rubbed with warm water. On the last mile, Hicks ate two more eggs and drank some brandy, his companions repeating the water rub.
Frederick Lorz had given up after 15 kilometers. He got into an escort vehicle, which broke down. He went to the goal on foot and was celebrated there as the winner. Although he claimed he was joking, he was banned from the Olympics for life. The American federation was more lenient and let the ban expire the following year, after which Lorz honestly won the Boston Marathon.
Allegedly, the barefoot black South African Len Tau was allegedly pursued by a dog for more than a mile, losing about six to seven minutes. Fourth-placed Cuban Félix Carvajal - also known as Andarín Carvajal in some sources - ran the race with heavy street shoes. Since he didn't have gym shorts, he cut off the legs of his normal pants before starting to adapt to the heat. To refresh himself he ate fresh fruit on the way, after which he was slowed down by stomach cramps.
There is a complete match of the sources used except for the runners who gave up the race. These are listed in the table above with corresponding comments on the respective source.
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
Web links
- Sports-Reference, Athletics at the 1904 St. Louis Summer Games: Men's Marathon , accessed July 30, 2018
- Olympic Games St. Louis 1904, Athletics, marathon men , IOC page on athletics in the 1904 Olympic Games at olympic.org, English, accessed July 30, 2018
References and comments
- ↑ a b c Albert Corey was actually French. But since he started for the Chicago Athletic Association , the IOC lists him as an American in the statistics.
- ↑ Kluge cites this performance as an existing world record, although the running distance apparently did not correspond to that of the marathon.
- ↑ Marathon length: Why is the route always 42.195 km long? by Martin Maciej, October 29, 2015 from giga.de. Retrieved on July 30, 2018
- ↑ The Trials and Tribulations of 1904 Olympic Marathon Runners , May 6, 2016 at todayifoundout.com, accessed July 30, 2018