Ah yes, 90°F heat, severe dehydration, rotten fruit, and rat poison: the necessary ingredients for making the marathon race of the 1904 Olympics infamous. The 1904 St. Louis Olympics were the United States first and were integrated as part of the World’s Fair that year. The marathon signaled the games’ start…and quite the starting point it turned out to be. The race began with an odd array of runners. Everyone from professional athletes to a man who had hitch-hiked their way to the starting line ran. This man was Félix Carbajal, a Cuban runner who, after finding his way from New Orleans to St. Louis with no money, showed up in everyday street clothes and shoes. Seeing this, someone found scissors and cut his dress pants at the knee, creating makeshift shorts for the man. And while this is certainly strange, the story gets even more bizarre from there.
A multitude of issues plagued the race, such as cars kicking up dust, which the runners inhaled causing serious injury to some, and a lack of water available to the runners. The only water available to them was at the six-mile mark and the 12-mile mark…now I am not a runner but even I know that that is simply not enough. Somehow, even amidst all of this, the runners completed the race. Fred Lorz, who had suffered from cramps around the nine-mile mark, miraculously finished the race with a time of a little under three hours! Unbelievable right?
Exactly. Fred Lorz, upon suffering from cramps, hopped in a car and was driven eleven miles on the course. At this point, he got out of the car, ran the rest of the way to the finish line, and the crowed praised him as the winner. However, just as President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter was about to put the gold medal on him, someone called him out. He admitted and nonchalantly claimed that it was a joke and he never intended on claiming the prize. Yeah…okay Fred.
So with Fred Lorz disqualified, who would be the winner? Would it be our friend Carbajal who ran in street clothes? Lets see some of his highlights of the race to find out! Félix Carbajal would stop along the road and chat with spectators, and in doing so he wasted precious time. He also got hungry and stole fruit from a stand along the road. Apparently not satisfied with the peaches he pinched, he then went into an orchard and enjoyed some rotten fruit…which consequently gave him severe stomach cramps and literally laid down and took a nap. So no, Carbajal was not the winner.
The winner was Thomas Hicks, an American favorite. He was assisted by his two trainers in a very odd way. To boost his energy, they gave him a mixture of egg whites, brandy, and strychnine, a.k.a. rat poison. Strychnine was used to stimulate him, but it ended up making him feel even worse than before and hallucinate. And yet, as his trainers held him up and he shuffled his feet, he crossed the finish line and was declared the winner.
Wow. What a story. Thankfully, no lives were lost during this marathon, but it seems that a little too much inspiration was taken from the fatal Greek legend that gives the race its name! If I could give one piece of advice to any of these men, I think I would remind them that is is slow and steady that wins the race…not rotten fruit or rat poison.
Meredith Gardner
References:
General:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1904_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_marathon
Specifics:
History on the Bridge 