What was the earliest marathon like?

100 years ago in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Held the most absurd and disastrous marathon in the history of world sports.

Historical background

This epic disaster marathon is a competition of St. Louis 1904 Summer Olympic Games. Although it was an Olympic event, at that time,

The organizers are completely indifferent to this matter: 1904 St. Louis Olympic Games is the third Olympic Games since the birth of 1894 Modern Olympic Games, and it is also the first Olympic Games held in a country outside Europe. Perhaps the Olympic Games was a novelty at that time. Everyone thought that the first two Olympic Games were a great failure, just like a joke.

So few countries are willing to send athletes all the way to the United States to compete. The last participating country is 12, and the athletes in St. Louis Olympic Games are ***689, of which the United States is 533, the second Canadian team is 4 1, and the remaining 10 countries add up to barely 100, so at that time, this Olympic Games was also dubbed as ".

Stadium conditions

The marathon was held on August 30th, 1904, with a total distance of 40km. The route twists and turns, passing through both plains and hills, with thick dust and countless pebbles scattered on the road. The cars and horses in front raise clouds of dust and fog, and the athletes behind them eat soil while running. And according to the professional marathon coach, the ideal temperature for running a marathon should be 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit (about 7- 10 degrees Celsius). If the temperature exceeds 2 1 celsius, the game should be postponed. But! At that time, the United States was in the hot summer, and the temperature on the day of the game was about 32 degrees Celsius, just a shade. In the area of direct sunlight, the somatosensory temperature is as high as 38 degrees Celsius!

According to records, the whole journey is 40 kilometers, one * * *, only one water station! At the midpoint of about 20 kilometers from the starting point, and it is a well! The water is still dirty. Athletes have to survive 20 kilometers to drink a mouthful of dirty water.

competitor

In the marathon race of 1904 St. Louis Olympic Games, * * * 4 1 runners signed up, but 9 chose to abandon the race before the race. Of the remaining 32 people, 18 gave up halfway because of physical exhaustion. Among the remaining 14 warriors who insist on running, there are some special ones: Ryan Tao Yaen (right), an African veteran who was kicked out barefoot by a dog, and he and his companions come from a Tswana tribe in Africa. They are veterans who participated in the second Boer War. They went to St. Louis just to attend a war memorial activity, and they were dragged to run a marathon for no reason.

They are African athletes (or amateurs) who participated in the Olympic Games for the first time, and they didn't even have shoes when they went to the competition. Although running barefoot on the gravel road, Len Taunyane still performed well and insisted on running the whole course. Until the end of the race, he met a group of wild dogs, who ran after him, so he had to running all the way and finally got rid of them at a distance of 1.4 km from the normal track. Finally, he ran back to the track, ran to the finish line and won the ninth place.

Felix Carbajal, a Cuban postman with strange painting style and food poisoning, was originally a postman from Cuba, but he had an unusual enthusiasm for this Central American marathon. He is not a professional athlete, and the Olympic Organizing Committee has not invited him. Even, he doesn't even have the money to go to America. But all this did not stop him from rushing all the way to the game. How did he get there? Almost all the way from Cuba ...

Felix Kabajar started a fund-raising campaign to show off his running. Felix Kabajar set out from Cuba, begged good people to donate all the way, then took the toll and crossed the border to the United States by boat, then hitchhiked and ran wildly, and finally arrived at the stadium before the game started. Finally, I ran fourth.

On the day of the fake champion who was disqualified for cycling cheating, the first person to cross the finish line was Frederick Lorz, but he didn't finish the race. After running 14 kilometers, Frederick Lors was exhausted, so the coach who had been with him helped him to the car and drove 17.7 kilometers. Unexpectedly, the car broke down halfway, and Frederick Lorz, who had almost a rest, got off and continued to run the rest of the journey. After reaching the finish line, the audience cheered for him, the band played the national anthem, and Roosevelt's daughter personally presented him with the gold medal. It was not until the second candidate, Thomas Hicks, struggled to cross the finish line that the oolong scam was exposed.

Thomas Hicks, the real champion who was almost killed by alcohol and rat poison, really paid too much for this ridiculous marathon.

In order to make Thomas Hicks play his best, the coach kept asking him to bring raw eggs and brandy along the way. In order to make him run well, the coach added brucine sulfate and rat poison to his brandy. . . . . This drug is extremely lethal to mice, but for people, as long as the dose is kept within a certain small range, this component can stimulate the human nervous system, making the muscles of users highly tense and explosive in a short time, but the drug effect is difficult to decline, and a little excessive will be fatal.

Near the finish line, Thomas Hicks had lost the strength to stand, and finally stumbled across the finish line with the help of the coach. After the last fake champion was disqualified, Thomas Hicks became the rightful champion.

The earliest marathon was a great starting point for human progress, although the conditions were difficult.