The 1904 Olympic Marathon May Have Been the Strangest Ever

The Smithsonian ^ | 8-7-12

[longtermmemmory]

I thought ultra marathons were 100 miles.

500 miles must be the WTF-who-hid-the-finish-line marathons.

Not to be confused with the coast to coast australian race or the morocan dessert race.

[Erasmus]

His biography was Bury My Heart at Aching Knee. .

[Zionist Conspirator]

The king was lazy and they had to extend the course the additional 2.2 miles. Now marathoners are supposed to say something king related at 24 miles. Officially it is praise of the king/queen. Reality suggests runners say something else regarding the royal in power.

Wow. I did not know that.

Thank you.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks afraidfortherepublic. Free e-book (registration req, see the page for details). The Olympic Games: How They All Began To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[tet68]

Held in 1904 in St. Louis, the games were tied to that year’s World’s Fair, which celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase while advancing, as did all such turn-of-the-century expositions, the notion of American imperialism.

Here we have another example of socialist history and from the Smithsonian no less. I grow tired of this creeping cancer. They continue to rewrite our history until we will not know it, certainly our kids don't.

[x]

Thanks for the information. I guess in the early Olympics, amateurism wasn't just for the playing field. It must have taken some time to be able to coordinate all the logistics.

And maybe before the Olympics became "the Olympics" -- with all the weight those words would carry -- the organizers had to settle for whatever they could get from cities, hotels, shipping and railroad companies, and athletic facilities.

[Salamander]

And packs of wild dogs!

[shibumi]

Have the Tug-O-War over a pit - filled with the wild dogs.

"I die laughing!"

[Salamander]

Even better!

:)

[Altariel]

“500 miles must be the WTF-who-hid-the-finish-line marathons.”

For the last time, it wasn’t me!

And even if it WAS me, you didn’t see or hear anything. Neither did SunkenCiv.

[JerseyanExile]

To be fair, that is how the nation tended to portray itself at the time. The nation was flush with victories over the Spanish and the annexation of territory in the Caribbean and Pacific - the Great White Fleet would set sail in only a few months. The theme of "America stepping onto the stage" as a major global power was a common one.

[cookcounty]

hills, varying from 100-to-300 feet high, some with brutally long ascents?

How about a 7,000 foot ascent? In 10 days come on out for the third oldest continuously run marathon in America, the Pikes Peak Marathon. Please bring your own oxygen bottle(s).

http://www.pikespeakmarathon.org/course.htm

[cookcounty]

hills varying from 100-to-300 feet high, some with brutally long ascents?

How about a marathon with a 7,000 foot ascent? In 10 days come on out for the third oldest continuously run marathon in America, the Pikes Peak Marathon. Halfway point is at the 14,110 foot summit, then plunge back down for 13 rock-filled miles. Please bring your own oxygen bottle(s).

http://www.pikespeakmarathon.org/course.htm

[piasa]

St. Louis is a great place in that you can have all the oxygen a runner will ever need...

Provided the runner can breathe it in the form of a hot thick syrup.

There's a reason that St. Louis is a baseball town and not a marathon town. Yuck. It's even humid in winter.

If it were neccessary to do a marathon there, then the runners should be given a beer at every stop.

[Straight Vermonter]

A 300’ hill is not a big deal if it has a very long ascent but the author here doesn’t tell us how long they were. We used to have a race in my home town that was called “The Longest Mile”. It ran from the shores of Lake Champlain at ~100 feet in elevation to the UVM green at ~300 feet. 200’ over a mile is rough but over 5 miles would be easy.

[Ole Okie]

in 1913 a Frenchman names Jules Goux is reported to have consumed 6 bottles of Champagne during the race

Ah! The Frogs had sense enough to drink their ethyl alcohol instead of putting it in the gas tank!

[marsh2]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086713/

The First Olympics (Athens) was one of my favorite movies. Don’t know how true it was, but the team appeared to try and figure out the various sports for training by reviewing ancient illustrations from vases and such.

[marsh2]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCTP1wSUqK0

A great clip from that movie