July 31, 2023 • 39 mins
In 1904, the U.S. hosted its first Olympics. It had a host of problems. But the event that was the most dangerous for athletes was the marathon.
Research:
- Abbott, Karen. “The 1904 Olympic Marathon May Have Been the Strangest Ever.” Smithsonian. Aug. 7, 2012. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-1904-olympic-marathon-may-have-been-the-strangest-ever-14910747/
- “Amateur Athletic Union Suspends Member for Life.” The Brunswick News. Sept. 4, 1904. https://www.newspapers.com/image/897913415/?terms=%22fred%20lorz%22%20&match=1
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Russo-Japanese War". Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 May. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/event/Russo-Japanese-War
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "St. Louis 1904 Olympic Games". Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Jun. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/event/St-Louis-1904-Olympic-Games
- “Cuban Marathon Runner Carvajal Comes to Life.” The Evening World. April 11, 1907. https://www.newspapers.com/image/85305956/
- “Felix Carvajal.” Olympics.com. https://olympics.com/en/athletes/felix-carvajal
- Lawrence, Andrew. “Think the Tokyo Olympics are a bad idea? St Louis 1904 set the bar high.” The Guardian. July 13, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/13/st-louis-olympics-1904-tokyo-flawed-games
- Longman, Jerry. “The Marathon’s Random Route to Its Length.” New York Times. April 20, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/sports/the-marathons-accidental-route-to-26-miles-385-yards.html?_r=0
- Lucas, Charles J. P. “The Olympic Games 1904.” Woodward & Tiernan. 1905. Accessed online: https://library.olympics.com/Default/doc/SYRACUSE/29697/the-olympic-games-1904-by-charles-j-p-lucas?_lg=en-GB
- “Olympic Games at St. Louis.” Weekly Democrat-News. Feb. 28, 1903. https://www.newspapers.com/image/954304418/?terms=olympic&match=1
- Rodrigues, Ashwin. “The Unbelievable True Story of the Craziest Olympic Marathon.” Runners World. Aug. 6, 2021. https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a37039437/1904-olympic-marathon/
- “William Garcia.” Olympics.com. https://olympics.com/en/athletes/william-garcia
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Before we get going today,
we have a little bit of housekeeping. Yeah, fun housekeeping. Hey,
(00:21):
we're going to Spain. We are. We are. If you
are listening to this in the summer of twenty twenty three,
which is when we're recording it. This November November two
through ninth, twenty twenty three, we are going to Barcelona.
I'm really excited. I'm very excited. I am finally gonna,
you know, have my my weepy moment in Cigaretta Familia
(00:45):
and have my goudy extravaganza. Yeah, here's a cool thing.
You can come with us if you want. Yeah, we
have a lot of fun things on the itinerary. It's
a six night trip. We are going to have some
tapus tours and we are going to go, as we said, segratapamilia,
(01:07):
all kinds of fun things you can go to. Defined
Destinations dot Com defined Destinations as the company who arranges
these tours for us. Right on the front page, it
says Barcelona, Spain, November two through nine. You can click
on that, or you can go to Defined Destinations dot
(01:27):
com slash Barcelona Dash twenty twenty three and get directly
to it. Listen, this is going to be right after
Halloween and there's a Gothic Barcelona tour, which is what's
going to be my off ramp. Yeah, we get some
questions about these, like how big is the group? Usually
approximately thirty people, so it's a small group. We have
(01:48):
a mix of planned activities and free time for people
to either rest or explore on their own whatever. We
have had a great time both of the prior trips
that we have done like this, and we are super
excited about this one. Yeah, so come and join us
if that all sounds good to you, we would love
to see you there. And now we can hop into
(02:10):
our episode. So, Tracy, we've talked about the Olympics a
few times on the show before we have we have
even briefly touched on today's topic, but very briefly. But
I think it really merits more discussion because the nineteen
oh four Olympic Marathon was in the funniest way I
can put it, a doozy Listen, I'm going to confess
(02:33):
I wanted something late and breezy this time around because
campaign finance was just a lot and made me very sad.
This ended up making me really really angry, So brace
for that. Uh. In nineteen oh four, the US hosted
its first Olympics, and it was quite an event. And
(02:54):
even that needs a little bit of setup because it
was originally going to be in a different city than
it ended up in. So that's where we're starting. So
the Modern Olympic Games came to be largely because a
man named Pierre de Coupertas spearheaded the effort to get
them going. We talked about all that in our live
(03:15):
show that we recorded at the Dallas Museum of Art
way back in twenty sixteen that also ran as a
classic in November of twenty twenty. And that first Modern
Olympics that he launched in eighteen ninety six took place
in Athens, Greece. The second one in nineteen hundred took
place in Paris, and then the nineteen oh four Olympic
(03:36):
Games were awarded to Chicago, Illinois. This was a huge
achievement for the city because it meant that Chicago was
going to be the first US city to ever host
the Olympic Games. Philadelphia and New York had also been contenders,
but ultimately they were passed over in favor of Chicago.
But nineteen oh four was also the us that the
(04:00):
Louisiana Purchase Exposition was being planned in Saint Louis. That
expo had originally been planned for nineteen oh three, but
it was delayed to give expo organizers a little more
time to prepare, and that meant that the nineteen oh
four new date would be competing with the Olympic Games
for attendees. Saint Louis, by the way, absolutely also wanted
(04:21):
the Olympics, and the expo's organizing committee came up with
what could definitely be perceived as kind of a snaky
way of ensuring that their event was not eclipsed by
Chicago's Olympics. The committee made a deal with the Amateur
Athletic Union to hold their annual track and field competition
alongside the Expo. The AAU had been founded in eighteen
(04:44):
eighty eight, and it had gained in popularity to the
point that it was really the most prominent athletic organization
in the United States, and this deal meant that people
who may have considered traveling to either the Expo or
the Olympics, would have both the Expo and a similar
large athletic event in Saint Louis to the time when
(05:04):
you know, people might not have had the funds to
go to both events, and if they had to pick
one for their vacation that year, you could get two
and one in Saint Louis this way. This entire situation
was punctuated by the fact that James Sullivan, who ran
the AAU, had a history of conflict with Kubertin and
(05:25):
had already tried to start his own international Track and
Field Association because he wanted to compete with the Olympics.
This conflict and competition for attendees led Kubertin, who was
president of the Olympic Committee, to move the games from
Illinois to Missouri, although he really did not have high
hopes for it in Saint Louis. If you listen to
(05:48):
our live show about Kuberta in the early Olympics, you've
heard this quote already, but it's illustrative of his feelings
on this matter, so we will use it again. Quote.
I had a sort of prison sentiment that the Olympiad
would match the mediocrity of the town. Kubertown stepped away
from any active involvement in the Saint Louis Games the
(06:10):
month after the change of cities was announced, in no
small part because of these ongoing clashes that he had
with James Sullivan. Regarding the change of location for the Games,
the city of Chicago was described in newspapers as quote
courteously agreeing to their transfer to Saint Louis. This was
(06:31):
also the second time that the Modern Olympics were held
alongside in expo. The nineteen hundred Games that happened in
Paris were staged in conjunction with the Paris Expo, and
that had been a problem because the games really did
not get the spotlight that Kubertown would have hoped, and
a lot of the planning which had been taken over
(06:51):
by the Expo organizers had been pretty sloppy. So there
was concern about it happening in a similar fashion in
Saint Louis, and that can concern was entirely valid and
also just from a planning standpoint. The decision to move
these games came pretty late. Cumbertin announced the change in
February nineteen oh three, and the games were to start
(07:13):
in July the following year. The Chicago location had been
chosen almost two years before that change, in May of
nineteen oh one, so this really did mean that there
was a very abbreviated schedule, even though there had been
planning underway for the Amateur Athletic Union events. To compound
the potential for disaster, there really wasn't any real documentation
(07:37):
for organizers to follow regarding how an Olympiad should run.
Kuberta had managed both the eighteen ninety six and nineteen
hundred Games according to his ideology of how they should work,
but he didn't write any of that down, at least
not in any form that he shared with other organizers,
so with him essentially out of the picture for the
(07:59):
nineteen oh four game, this was a scenario where the
people in charge were kind of making it up as
they went on a very short timeline. This was not
just a case of events being poorly organized. This Olympiad
had a variety of events that were an extremely poor taste,
and they really gave the nineteen oh four Games a
(08:19):
legacy of colonialism and racism. One of the things that
the Expo committee did was to try to intertwine the
games with the exhibitions at the expo, so they were
tying to the anthropology exhibits. The Olympics in the expo
hosted what were called Anthropology Days. This was a two
(08:41):
day event with athletic competitions staged that were really racist.
They pitted various groups of indigenous people from around the
world that were being displayed in these anthropology exhibits against
one another. This was not a case where something was
(09:01):
accepted for the time. A lot of things that we
think of as accepted for the time really weren't, and
people called out these competitions as racist and gross as
they were happening. If you've ever seen the quote by
Kubertown that states quote, it will of course lose its
appeal when black men, red men, and yellow men learn
(09:23):
to run, jump, and throw, and leave the white men
behind them. That's a direct response to this Anthropology Days competition,
which Kopertown called an outrageous charade. This idea was the
brainchild of none other than James Sullivan. James Sullivan, I'm
Not Gonna Lie emerges as one of the villains of
(09:44):
this story. So racist garbage events aside, there were plenty
of other problems plaguing the nineteen oh four Saint Louis Games.
Just as had been the case in Paris, the Expo
overshadowed the event. Newspaper write ups of various specific sporting events,
including the marathon that we're going to talk about today,
called them things like the Exposition Marathon, rather than referencing
(10:08):
the Olympics at all. Additionally, the Olympiad, part of all
of the festivities, was not particularly well attended, not by
spectators and not by athletes. Some of this was because
the nineteen hundred Games had gone really poorly and people
were just kind of suspicious of how the Olympics were
going to work. Some of this was because many countries
(10:30):
had been drawn into the conflict of the Russo Japanese War,
which started in February nineteen oh four and was ongoing
when the Games began on July first. That war was
still happening when the Games finally ended in late November. Plus,
Saint Louis was just seen as remote, so foreign travelers
were not as interested in attending. And while Saint Louis
(10:53):
was and is a major US city to people living
outside the US, it didn't necessarily seem that way in
nineteen o five, and being so far from a coast
meant it was just harder to get to. The way
attendance shook out for athletes skewed the numbers really heavily
for the US participants. There were only twelve participating nations,
(11:15):
the US, Australia, Switzerland, Austria, South Africa, Canada, Hungary, Cuba, Greece, France,
Germany and Britain. There were six hundred and thirty athletes
who competed, and five hundred and twenty three of those
were from the US, so the big majority. This led
to a situation where some events only included US athletes
(11:38):
as competitors. This was the first Olympics where the gold, silver,
and bronze medal system was implemented. Before this, it was
only the first place winners who took holl medals, and
those were gold. The US, unsurprisingly took the vast majority
of the medals at all levels. Of the ninety five
(11:58):
gold medals awarded, the un US took seventy six and
seventy eight silvers and seventy seven bronzes for a whopping
two hundred and thirty medals total. Those numbers have kind
of shifted over the years due to some of the
events being coned. Numerous medals credited to the US have
actually been contested right into the twenty first century because
(12:20):
in some cases immigrants who were not US citizens were
entered by the US team, and their home countries want
those medals to be credited to the athlete's original nations.
But the event that was perhaps the most unusual, startling
and difficult to even contemplate, and there is room for
(12:41):
plenty of additional adjectives, as you'll hear, was the marathon,
and we will talk about that after we pause for
a sponsor break. We mentioned some of the weirdness of
the nineteen oh four Olympic Marathon in that live show
(13:02):
we referenced earlier, including look car ride one of the
competitors took, but we did not get all of the
many odd and often harrowing happenings of the race, because
there were a lot of strange things playing out that day,
and it started with an odd assortment of competitors. There
were several experienced marathoners on the start line, all of
(13:23):
whom were from the US. Sam Miller, John Lorden, Arthur L. Newton,
Michael Spring and Thomas Hicks. One of them was expected
to win. Meller had won the nineteen oh two Boston Marathon.
John Lorden won it in nineteen oh three. Michael Spring
was the Boston Marathon's most recent champion. He had taken
(13:44):
the prize earlier that year in April, and Newton had
run the Olympic Marathon event in Paris. Thomas Hicks had
two and he had come in second. There were thirty
two runners on the start line on the afternoon of
August thirtieth, but only four countries were represented, and the
remaining twenty seven runners were really varied in their experience.
(14:06):
There was another American competitor in the mix who had
qualified by running a surprisingly short race that was spread Lures,
who was a bricklayer who said he only had time
to train at night. The race that got him into
the Games was a special event staged by the Amateur
Athletic Union. That's sometimes said to have been five miles,
(14:29):
other times it's said to have been seven. In either case,
that's a much shorter distance than a qualifier would normally
need today. Yeah, I read multiple accounts of it, and
then they describe it differently, so and I couldn't ever
find one solid like here's even like a newspaper report
(14:51):
that seems to have solid reporting going on. So that's
what's up. South Africa was represented by two runners, Gentao
and Jan Mashani. Both were part of a group that
had been sent by South Africa to re enact segments
of the Boer War as an exhibit. They were both
part of the Bantu speaking Twana people, and they had
both been messengers during the war, a job that was
(15:14):
all running, so they were both very well conditioned for
the marathon, and they both ran at barefoot. Greece had
ten runners in the marathon, although none of them had
trained for the race, they were pretty clear that they
were there for fellowship with the other Olympians rather than
any sort of attempt at winning. Runner John Furlough was
(15:34):
Greek American. Although his citizenship was in the US, he
chose to run for Greece. Cuba was represented by a
man named Feligue's Carvajal, who had fundraised the money to
travel to the Games himself by staging a variety of
demonstrations in Cuba. In one of those, he ran from
one side of Cuba to the other in the course
of sixteen days. He also ran laps around city hall
(15:58):
in Havana as part of his effort to drum up money.
That was because he allegedly had been turned away from
a requested meeting with the mayor, so he ran those
laps to draw a crowd and get the mayor's attention,
and that trick apparently worked because the mayor's office paid
for his travel. Carver Hall was a mailman by trade,
(16:18):
but that doesn't really convey the endurance needed for the job.
He was a post runner. He was constantly on the
move and apparently ran a lot when he was doing
his roots. Like the South African competitors, he had also
been a messenger runner during military conflict, carrying messages for
General Maximo Gomez in the Cuban War of Independence. There
(16:39):
are a couple of different stories about carve Hall having
money issues en route to Saint Louis. One version says
that the mayor didn't give him enough to cover anything
but the fare he needed for transportation. Another version suggests
that when he stopped in New Orleans on the way
to the Olympic Games, he gambled all of his pocket
money a way way regardless, Carva Hall had to hitchhike
(17:03):
and walk his way to the competition. He also didn't
really get enough to eat. He was a pretty small guy,
reportedly five feet tall and one hundred pounds. He looked
apparently scrawny when he got to the expo and the games.
He also didn't have athletic clothes, and he ran in
a white button down shirt, a beret and his trousers
(17:24):
which had been cut short, either by Felix or by
another competitor that probably would have been American competitor Martin Sheridan.
They were concerned, reasonably so that he would overheat in
this clothing. He also just wore normal shoes to run in. Ye. Yeah,
there are pictures of him at the start line and
(17:46):
he looks essentially dressed for a day of business perhaps,
but his pants have been cut short. He still has
on like the full length stockings underneath them. Though. All right,
I'm going to give fair warning to any of our
listeners who run, because the course conditions that we're about
to talk about are flat out horrifying, and if you
are not a runner, some of it's a little bit gross.
(18:08):
Although we're not going to get supergraphic. So when the
race started at three zero three pm, it was ninety
degrees fahrenheit. That's thirty two point two degrees celsius, so
definitely not optimal running temperature. It was also very humid.
The race started in the Olympic Stadium that was filled
with an estimated ten thousand spectators, and then after five
(18:30):
laps around the track, the runners were routed out onto
the rest of the course, which was not today's regulation
length of twenty six point two miles. It was twenty
four point eighty five. At this point, the distance of
the marathon was still being tweaked as organizers kind of
sought the optimal distance. The course itself was made up
of an assortment of challenging conditions. According to an account
(18:53):
written by race official Charles Lucas, it included quote no
less than seven hills, varying from one hundred to three
hundred feet high, some with long ascents and others with
short ascents. Lucas wrote a book titled the Olympic Games
nineteen oh four, which he published in nineteen oh five,
and it's through his account that we have most of
(19:15):
the information regarding what went on during the marathon. Heads
up if you go looking for this book. He also
says some very racist stuff in it. Regarding this course,
he noted that the one in Saint Louis was quote
the most difficult a human being was ever asked to
run over. At Athens the road from the battlefield of Marathon,
(19:35):
and that at Paris were boulevards compared to the course
selected in Saint Louis. The running route once outside the
stadium was anything but uniform. Most of the segments of
it were incredibly dusty. Because of this late part of
the summer, some of them were covered in loose gravel,
and those dusty segments were brutal because although cars were
(19:57):
still kind of a new and novel invention at this
point point, there were some leading the runners along the course,
as well as carrying race staffers and coaches alongside the runners,
and those vehicles were kicking dust right into the runners'
faces while they were breathing heavily from exertions, so it
wasn't like they couldn't inhale it. This dust also obscured
(20:19):
their vision, and to top things off, this was not
a closed course, so runners were competing while they were
also looking out for street traffic and pedestrians. Hydration was
a whole story unto itself. If you run a marathon today,
you can reasonably expect at least eight water stations. They
(20:40):
may or may not include the option of a sports
drink with electrolytes. Some stops may even have quick energy
fuel like gels or gummies, occasionally even chocolate. That was
definitely not the case for the nineteen oh four Olympics, though,
there were only two water stations on the entire course,
two not eight. Two uh, and that is actually not
(21:05):
reported in all of the accounts. Lucas mentions only one
as being official. One was near the six mile mark,
where there was conveniently a water tower, and that may
or may not have been an official station. The other
was at the twelve mile mark, which Lucas mentioned, where
there was a well on the course. This meant that
the runners had to go at least half the race
(21:27):
without any water, and that well water did not agree
with everyone who drank it. A lot of the runners
had stomach issues after drinking it. That is all a
terrifying prospect, but it becomes really infuriating because this lack
of water stops was not something that happened because of
poor planning. It was done to those runners on purpose,
(21:50):
and that is because James Sullivan decided that this would
be a good opportunity to run an experiment to see
what dehydration would do to endurance athletes during my research
and stopped around the house in a full bore red
rage for quite a while after reading, Yeah, this could
have killed people. It almost did so. Despite all of
(22:11):
these issues with the course, most of the runners persevered.
When the race started, Fred Laures took the early lead.
Thomas Hicks passed him after just a short while. John
Lorden became nauseated and started to vomit and didn't complete
the race. He was there for less than a mile.
Within just a few miles, Miller was in the lead
(22:31):
group and Lores and Hicks had fallen back. Despite Lorden's
early dropout, the rest of the runners started fairly well,
but things quickly fell apart, and we're going to talk
about how after we paused for a sponsor break. As
(22:54):
the race left the stadium and got onto the dusty roadways,
Fred Lawres chugged along for nine miles, but then he
started experiencing cramps. He was loaded into a support vehicle
for transport, and he waved the crowds as he traveled
the route back to the stadium. Once he had apparently
dropped out, Hicks moved up a bit, but not enough
(23:14):
to overtake the leaders after the brief boost that they
all got from the second or perhaps first water stop
right around that middle marker. As the mile markers reached
into the teens, the field thimmed out quite a bit.
Sam Miller lost his lead also due to cramps, which
persisted to the point that he had to drop out.
(23:36):
Another US competitor, Henry Balley, stopped running and continued at
a walking pace, but another of the US runners, William Garcia,
made it nineteen miles before he just could go no further.
The dusty conditions meant that he had been inhaling huge
amounts of particulate as he ran. This took his toll
and he collapsed by the side of the course. Once
(23:59):
he was spotted on the ground, race officials got him
to emergency care. When Garcia was examined by a doctor,
it was determined that he had taken in so much
dust that he had damaged his esophagus and stomach and
was hemorrhaging internally. This was to the point that his
life was in danger. Because he had made it to
(24:20):
medical care his conditions stabilized, he did eventually recover. Gentoo
of South Africa was chased by a dog at one
point and ended up about a mile off course. He
still managed to finish ninth. His fellow South African delicate
Jan Mashiani, came in twelfth. Perhaps the only delightful runner's
(24:41):
story in this race is that of Cuban runner Felix Carbajal.
He may not have had proper attire, but he does
seem like he had a good time. He stopped on
occasion to chat with spectators. He asked some people at
one point if he could have one of the peaches
they were eating that They told him no, but he
(25:01):
just took two of them and ran, something that is
characterized in accounts as playful and not criminal. Given the
lack of supportive fluids on this course, this probably would
have helped save him from some physical issues. But according
to some accounts, he also picked some apples as he
ran and ate those turned out. Those apples, though, were bad.
(25:25):
They gave him terrible stomach cramps. Also, he took a
brief nap before getting back up and finishing the race.
I should say we don't have official documentation about that
apple and nap part, but given other things we know
about him, it really adds up. Although Hicks had started
pretty strong and had done well for the first several miles,
(25:47):
he started having some pretty serious issues well before the
halfway point. When he reached the ten mile mark, he
was so dehydrated that he needed to be carried by
two men, Charles Lucas, the race official who wrote the
count of the race, and Hugh McGrath, who was one
of the coaches that was in the supporting vehicles. They
became his two man crew for the remainder of the race.
(26:10):
They refused him water, though even when he begged, wanting
to stay true to the rules of Sullivan's experiment, the
most he got was a sponge with warm water daubed
around his mouth. Hicks continued with support, literally as his
two crew members held him up from either side for
parts of the race. You can find photos of him
(26:31):
clearly being propped up. At the twelve mile mark, he
got some water, which bullyed him for a while, but
soon he asked for an assist and this is where
his team gave him an elixir to keep going. That
is just difficult to believe. This was egg white mixed
with strychnine, which is a poison. At the time, minute
(26:54):
doses of strychnine were believed to be a performance enhancer.
The dose that was given to Hicks was a sixtieth
of a grain. It seems to have helped Hicks kept
moving although he was dispirited. While Hicks was being propelled
along by his team, they witnessed Lures whip by them
(27:14):
fresh as a daisy. The vehicle that had picked Fred
Laure's up when he had cramps had sputtered to a stop.
All of the dust had caused it to stall, and
at this point Laurs was feeling better, so he got
out and started running again. Hicks's men reportedly saw this
and yelled at Laurs that he couldn't do that, but
Laurs reportedly told them he was just going to run
(27:36):
back to the stadium and get help for that broken
down automobile. That was not what happened. When he got
to the stadium, he ran a lap around the track,
which is how the race finished, and then he crossed
the finish line to the cheers of the crowd, who
all believed that he was the winner. Lares's so called
victory had thrilled the spectators who thought they had just
(27:59):
seen the first US Olympic Marathon gold medalist finished the race.
That culminated in another podcast subject Alice Roosevelt crowning him
with the winner's wreath. Almost because someone in the crowd,
and it's not known who yelled the lawyers had cheated
(28:19):
his big moment unraveled because it was something that he
had not earned. He claimed he had just been joking
about having won the race. Yeah. Meanwhile, Hicks was still trying,
but he was in very rough shape. He was reportedly pale,
His eyes were described as dull and lustreless. His support
(28:41):
team gave him another dose of egg whites and strychnine,
this time with a brandy chaser. He was also bathed
in warm water head to toe from a bucket that
had been heated in the boiler of a steam engine car.
Hicks kept going, but he also fell into a complete delirium.
He was nearing the end, but he believed he had
(29:03):
another twenty miles to go after the last two hills,
which were near the end of the race, which he
walked up and then shuffled down. He reached the final mile,
but he begged his trainers to just let him lie down.
He also begged for food, and he was given two
more egg whites with brandy, although when another runner offered
(29:24):
him what is described in Lucas's record as beef tea,
so I'm assuming that's like a light broth, he was
not allowed to have it. While Lucas described Hicks as
kind of checked out mentally, he also described his gait
as quote running mechanically like a well oiled piece of machinery.
Hicks's finish was not the triumphant scenario that he was
(29:47):
probably envisioning. When he started the race. He was basically carried.
His feet were moving, but the two men who had
been with him at that point for more than fourteen
miles were physically holding him up up. Hicks collapsed as
he crossed the tape, falling into the arms of Thomas Riley,
who was one of the coaches for the American team.
(30:08):
The dehydrated Hicks reportedly weighed eight pounds less when he
finished the race than when he started, and he was
in really bad shape. It had taken him three hours,
twenty eight minutes fifty three seconds to finish this grueling race,
and he probably came close to dying on the course.
When the race was over, he was too weak to
(30:31):
receive his award. He did not leave the stadium area
for an hour, and during that time four doctors attended
to him. During that time, there were other finishers. Albert J.
Cory if Chicago came in second, Arthur Newton finished third,
and Carve Hall finished fourth. It's been estimated that carver
(30:51):
Hall's various stops to chat and nap cost him about
an hour of time, so he probably would have won
had he not done that, and it's a pity that
he finished out of the metallepool because he was probably
the best athlete in the race. It's worth noting that
he was also the only one out there who was
totally alone. He didn't have any fellow countrymen, he did
(31:12):
not have any support staff. He was just out having
a run and seemingly enjoying himself along the way. He
was described at the finish line as being quite fresh
and energetic and in good spirits and just a lot
livelier than any of the other athletes of the thirty
two men who started the race, only fourteen of them
finished it. Fred Laws was banned from the Amateur Athletic
(31:36):
Union for life, but that band did not hold. He
continued to assert that he had just been playing by
running that lap and crossing the finish line. Eventually, the
AAU reinstated him. He won the Boston Marathon the next year.
Charles Lucas made very clear in his book that he
thought very little of Laws, who he thought had tainted
(31:57):
the entire event with his fullness. Hicks's win was contested
by the Chicago Athletic Association, which had sent several runners
for the US team, and the charge there was that
he had been helped so very much for the majority
of the race that there really was no way to
claim that he had won through his own stamina or
power as a runner. But the Olympic referee, who had
(32:20):
paced Hicks by car throughout said that he won and
that it was an honest win, and that was the
end of that. As for any scientific findings, based on
the experimenting done during the race, Lucas came to the
conclusion that quote drugs are of much benefit to athletes
along the road, which just had a terrible conclusion to
(32:43):
come to you from that. Today, the nineteen oh four
marathon is considered the most chaotic such event in modern
Olympic history. I have so many things from behind the scenes.
Do you have listener mail? I do? I have two
(33:03):
pieces again, because one is very very short. This first
one is from Ben, who writes, greetings. I loved your
eponymous foods discussion on beef stroking off, and I'm probably
just piling onto a bunch of other comments, but I
wanted to note that Russia is part of Europe. You
mentioned the European influence as if Russia wasn't part of
Europe a couple times. This is actually funny because I
(33:25):
remember growing up and I was always I always got
the granted I grew up during Cold War, so uss
are at the time Asian part of Asian, but it
qualifies as both because parts of it are in Europe
and parts of it are in Asia. As we were
recording that, I had the same thought and I was like,
somebody's going to write to us about it really being
(33:46):
in Europe, and it's number one. These these boundaries are
arbitrary and largely made up, and a lot of them
have to do with like commonalities related to language and culture,
but also like that is very ill defined and vague,
and I've seen whole arguments about like the underlying biases
(34:10):
and things that are part of all of these divisions.
But yeah, as I was as we were recording, I
was like, it's both, so hopefully it'll be okay. Yeah. Yeah,
Also that there wasn't a pylon, but I just thought
I would read that because it's a good point because
we didn't talk about it in the episode. That's what's up.
(34:32):
The other is from our listener Heidi, who writes, I've
been an avid listener for years and greatly enjoyed your show.
It's become a weekly tradition to get caught up on
a long commute. My six year old daughter has a
rare genetic disease called metachromatic leukodystrophe or MLD. I Hope
I said that right. Each week we travel to the
University of Iowa for an experimental treatment to help slow
(34:52):
the progression of the disease and hopefully improve the quality
and length of her life. Children with late infantile MLD
typically pass before the age of ten. This commute is
four hours round trip and listening to you makes the
drive something I look forward to you each week. Today,
while driving home from the university, I listened to the
episode on Eponymous Foods and Behind the Scenes Mini, both
(35:12):
of which struck on things from my own life. I
studied Russian in high school and college. While in high school,
I had the opportunity to travel to Saint Petersburg in Moscow.
Saint Petersburg was amazing, and I clearly remember walking down
the street when our tour guide pointed at this ornate
green building and said, that's where beef Stroganoff was invented.
I snapped a picture of it, and as soon as
(35:33):
I got home today I bolted to my basement to
dig it out and send it to you. This was
in the infancy of digital photography, so I apologize that
it's a picture of a picture. By the way, the
picture looks fine. I was surprised to find out from
the episode that this was likely not the precise location
of its origin. Nonetheless, it is still the Stroganoff Palace,
and by that virtue worthy of note. I had hoped
(35:55):
to try authentic beef stroganof while in Russia. I did
not get the opportunity, but I did have several other
amazing and rather interesting foods. The other food you mentioned
with which I have a personal connection is capt'n Crunch.
I am originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which is one
of and perhaps the only location Captain Crunch is made.
I had to laugh at your oops Alberry's reference. Cedar
(36:17):
Rapids tagline is the city of five seasons, and this
is often jokingly changed to the city of five smells.
There are several factories, including Quaker Oats and Cedar Rapids,
that are responsible for its unique and rather unpleasant aroma.
We oftentimes joke that the only day Cedar Rapid smells
good is on Sunday because this is crunch berry Day.
(36:39):
I'm not one hundred percent sure if this was true
or is still true today, but on Sundays I do
remember downtown smelling a little more pleasant. In addition to
the crunch berries, my grandmother made dolls and puppets and
was actually asked to design the cap'n but she decided
not to take on the commission. She later said she
regretted this not only because of the cereals eventual popularity,
(36:59):
but because she did not like the finished product. Had
she designed it, no doubt the Captain would look very
different today. I sadly don't have any pets to send
photos of, but I did take a photo of my daughter.
She herself is making history by contributing to research on
this treatment that will hopefully improve the lives of other
children with MLD after her. We are taking her and
(37:20):
her brother's to Disneyland in a few weeks and we
are so excited. She smiles so big when we talk
about how she gets to go to the Bibittybobbity boutique
and get the royal treatment. Thank you for always providing
a world with entertainment that is both inclusive and informative.
You give me hope and joy often in the moments
I need it most. Give me all choked up, Heidi,
I hope you guys have an amazing time in Disneyland.
(37:42):
By the way, your daughter is adorable and she is
going to be so cute once she is coded in
all of the Bibittybobby glitter. That is one of my
favorite things. Even though I am very openly not a
big kid person, there is nothing better than seeing children
like full glitter everything when come out of there, it
is so joyous. I love it. This also gave me
(38:04):
a hilarious flashback, Tracy. I don't think you moved to
Atlanta in time to experience the delight of the free
Doo lay factory that used to be in Shambley. No,
where the Low's is in that Brookhaven Shambly kind of
crossover area used to be the Freeedo lay factory. And
I used to work very near there and it would
(38:24):
smell like chili cheese doritos some days, and I did
not find that gross at all. I loved it. So
thinking about a town that smells like oatmeal and sugar
cereals being made all the time actually sounds pretty good
to me. But Heidi, I wanted to thank you for
this because one I'm stroking off that might have been
the building where it was invented. We don't know. You
(38:47):
could say that. I think that's fine, And again, I
hope your trip is amazing. Disneyland is one of the
many places I love, love, love, I hope you eat
all the Ronto wraps for me while you're there. If
you like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also
find us as missed in History on social media, and
(39:07):
if you haven't subscribed, you can do that on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Before we get going today,
we have a little bit of housekeeping. Yeah, fun housekeeping. Hey,
(00:21):
we're going to Spain. We are. We are. If you
are listening to this in the summer of twenty twenty three,
which is when we're recording it. This November November two
through ninth, twenty twenty three, we are going to Barcelona.
I'm really excited. I'm very excited. I am finally gonna,
you know, have my my weepy moment in Cigaretta Familia
(00:45):
and have my goudy extravaganza. Yeah, here's a cool thing.
You can come with us if you want. Yeah, we
have a lot of fun things on the itinerary. It's
a six night trip. We are going to have some
tapus tours and we are going to go, as we said, segratapamilia,
(01:07):
all kinds of fun things you can go to. Defined
Destinations dot Com defined Destinations as the company who arranges
these tours for us. Right on the front page, it
says Barcelona, Spain, November two through nine. You can click
on that, or you can go to Defined Destinations dot
(01:27):
com slash Barcelona Dash twenty twenty three and get directly
to it. Listen, this is going to be right after
Halloween and there's a Gothic Barcelona tour, which is what's
going to be my off ramp. Yeah, we get some
questions about these, like how big is the group? Usually
approximately thirty people, so it's a small group. We have
(01:48):
a mix of planned activities and free time for people
to either rest or explore on their own whatever. We
have had a great time both of the prior trips
that we have done like this, and we are super
excited about this one. Yeah, so come and join us
if that all sounds good to you, we would love
to see you there. And now we can hop into
(02:10):
our episode. So, Tracy, we've talked about the Olympics a
few times on the show before we have we have
even briefly touched on today's topic, but very briefly. But
I think it really merits more discussion because the nineteen
oh four Olympic Marathon was in the funniest way I
can put it, a doozy Listen, I'm going to confess
(02:33):
I wanted something late and breezy this time around because
campaign finance was just a lot and made me very sad.
This ended up making me really really angry, So brace
for that. Uh. In nineteen oh four, the US hosted
its first Olympics, and it was quite an event. And
(02:54):
even that needs a little bit of setup because it
was originally going to be in a different city than
it ended up in. So that's where we're starting. So
the Modern Olympic Games came to be largely because a
man named Pierre de Coupertas spearheaded the effort to get
them going. We talked about all that in our live
(03:15):
show that we recorded at the Dallas Museum of Art
way back in twenty sixteen that also ran as a
classic in November of twenty twenty. And that first Modern
Olympics that he launched in eighteen ninety six took place
in Athens, Greece. The second one in nineteen hundred took
place in Paris, and then the nineteen oh four Olympic
(03:36):
Games were awarded to Chicago, Illinois. This was a huge
achievement for the city because it meant that Chicago was
going to be the first US city to ever host
the Olympic Games. Philadelphia and New York had also been contenders,
but ultimately they were passed over in favor of Chicago.
But nineteen oh four was also the us that the
(04:00):
Louisiana Purchase Exposition was being planned in Saint Louis. That
expo had originally been planned for nineteen oh three, but
it was delayed to give expo organizers a little more
time to prepare, and that meant that the nineteen oh
four new date would be competing with the Olympic Games
for attendees. Saint Louis, by the way, absolutely also wanted
(04:21):
the Olympics, and the expo's organizing committee came up with
what could definitely be perceived as kind of a snaky
way of ensuring that their event was not eclipsed by
Chicago's Olympics. The committee made a deal with the Amateur
Athletic Union to hold their annual track and field competition
alongside the Expo. The AAU had been founded in eighteen
(04:44):
eighty eight, and it had gained in popularity to the
point that it was really the most prominent athletic organization
in the United States, and this deal meant that people
who may have considered traveling to either the Expo or
the Olympics, would have both the Expo and a similar
large athletic event in Saint Louis to the time when
(05:04):
you know, people might not have had the funds to
go to both events, and if they had to pick
one for their vacation that year, you could get two
and one in Saint Louis this way. This entire situation
was punctuated by the fact that James Sullivan, who ran
the AAU, had a history of conflict with Kubertin and
(05:25):
had already tried to start his own international Track and
Field Association because he wanted to compete with the Olympics.
This conflict and competition for attendees led Kubertin, who was
president of the Olympic Committee, to move the games from
Illinois to Missouri, although he really did not have high
hopes for it in Saint Louis. If you listen to
(05:48):
our live show about Kuberta in the early Olympics, you've
heard this quote already, but it's illustrative of his feelings
on this matter, so we will use it again. Quote.
I had a sort of prison sentiment that the Olympiad
would match the mediocrity of the town. Kubertown stepped away
from any active involvement in the Saint Louis Games the
(06:10):
month after the change of cities was announced, in no
small part because of these ongoing clashes that he had
with James Sullivan. Regarding the change of location for the Games,
the city of Chicago was described in newspapers as quote
courteously agreeing to their transfer to Saint Louis. This was
(06:31):
also the second time that the Modern Olympics were held
alongside in expo. The nineteen hundred Games that happened in
Paris were staged in conjunction with the Paris Expo, and
that had been a problem because the games really did
not get the spotlight that Kubertown would have hoped, and
a lot of the planning which had been taken over
(06:51):
by the Expo organizers had been pretty sloppy. So there
was concern about it happening in a similar fashion in
Saint Louis, and that can concern was entirely valid and
also just from a planning standpoint. The decision to move
these games came pretty late. Cumbertin announced the change in
February nineteen oh three, and the games were to start
(07:13):
in July the following year. The Chicago location had been
chosen almost two years before that change, in May of
nineteen oh one, so this really did mean that there
was a very abbreviated schedule, even though there had been
planning underway for the Amateur Athletic Union events. To compound
the potential for disaster, there really wasn't any real documentation
(07:37):
for organizers to follow regarding how an Olympiad should run.
Kuberta had managed both the eighteen ninety six and nineteen
hundred Games according to his ideology of how they should work,
but he didn't write any of that down, at least
not in any form that he shared with other organizers,
so with him essentially out of the picture for the
(07:59):
nineteen oh four game, this was a scenario where the
people in charge were kind of making it up as
they went on a very short timeline. This was not
just a case of events being poorly organized. This Olympiad
had a variety of events that were an extremely poor taste,
and they really gave the nineteen oh four Games a
(08:19):
legacy of colonialism and racism. One of the things that
the Expo committee did was to try to intertwine the
games with the exhibitions at the expo, so they were
tying to the anthropology exhibits. The Olympics in the expo
hosted what were called Anthropology Days. This was a two
(08:41):
day event with athletic competitions staged that were really racist.
They pitted various groups of indigenous people from around the
world that were being displayed in these anthropology exhibits against
one another. This was not a case where something was
(09:01):
accepted for the time. A lot of things that we
think of as accepted for the time really weren't, and
people called out these competitions as racist and gross as
they were happening. If you've ever seen the quote by
Kubertown that states quote, it will of course lose its
appeal when black men, red men, and yellow men learn
(09:23):
to run, jump, and throw, and leave the white men
behind them. That's a direct response to this Anthropology Days competition,
which Kopertown called an outrageous charade. This idea was the
brainchild of none other than James Sullivan. James Sullivan, I'm
Not Gonna Lie emerges as one of the villains of
(09:44):
this story. So racist garbage events aside, there were plenty
of other problems plaguing the nineteen oh four Saint Louis Games.
Just as had been the case in Paris, the Expo
overshadowed the event. Newspaper write ups of various specific sporting events,
including the marathon that we're going to talk about today,
called them things like the Exposition Marathon, rather than referencing
(10:08):
the Olympics at all. Additionally, the Olympiad, part of all
of the festivities, was not particularly well attended, not by
spectators and not by athletes. Some of this was because
the nineteen hundred Games had gone really poorly and people
were just kind of suspicious of how the Olympics were
going to work. Some of this was because many countries
(10:30):
had been drawn into the conflict of the Russo Japanese War,
which started in February nineteen oh four and was ongoing
when the Games began on July first. That war was
still happening when the Games finally ended in late November. Plus,
Saint Louis was just seen as remote, so foreign travelers
were not as interested in attending. And while Saint Louis
(10:53):
was and is a major US city to people living
outside the US, it didn't necessarily seem that way in
nineteen o five, and being so far from a coast
meant it was just harder to get to. The way
attendance shook out for athletes skewed the numbers really heavily
for the US participants. There were only twelve participating nations,
(11:15):
the US, Australia, Switzerland, Austria, South Africa, Canada, Hungary, Cuba, Greece, France,
Germany and Britain. There were six hundred and thirty athletes
who competed, and five hundred and twenty three of those
were from the US, so the big majority. This led
to a situation where some events only included US athletes
(11:38):
as competitors. This was the first Olympics where the gold, silver,
and bronze medal system was implemented. Before this, it was
only the first place winners who took holl medals, and
those were gold. The US, unsurprisingly took the vast majority
of the medals at all levels. Of the ninety five
(11:58):
gold medals awarded, the un US took seventy six and
seventy eight silvers and seventy seven bronzes for a whopping
two hundred and thirty medals total. Those numbers have kind
of shifted over the years due to some of the
events being coned. Numerous medals credited to the US have
actually been contested right into the twenty first century because
(12:20):
in some cases immigrants who were not US citizens were
entered by the US team, and their home countries want
those medals to be credited to the athlete's original nations.
But the event that was perhaps the most unusual, startling
and difficult to even contemplate, and there is room for
(12:41):
plenty of additional adjectives, as you'll hear, was the marathon,
and we will talk about that after we pause for
a sponsor break. We mentioned some of the weirdness of
the nineteen oh four Olympic Marathon in that live show
(13:02):
we referenced earlier, including look car ride one of the
competitors took, but we did not get all of the
many odd and often harrowing happenings of the race, because
there were a lot of strange things playing out that day,
and it started with an odd assortment of competitors. There
were several experienced marathoners on the start line, all of
(13:23):
whom were from the US. Sam Miller, John Lorden, Arthur L. Newton,
Michael Spring and Thomas Hicks. One of them was expected
to win. Meller had won the nineteen oh two Boston Marathon.
John Lorden won it in nineteen oh three. Michael Spring
was the Boston Marathon's most recent champion. He had taken
(13:44):
the prize earlier that year in April, and Newton had
run the Olympic Marathon event in Paris. Thomas Hicks had
two and he had come in second. There were thirty
two runners on the start line on the afternoon of
August thirtieth, but only four countries were represented, and the
remaining twenty seven runners were really varied in their experience.
(14:06):
There was another American competitor in the mix who had
qualified by running a surprisingly short race that was spread Lures,
who was a bricklayer who said he only had time
to train at night. The race that got him into
the Games was a special event staged by the Amateur
Athletic Union. That's sometimes said to have been five miles,
(14:29):
other times it's said to have been seven. In either case,
that's a much shorter distance than a qualifier would normally
need today. Yeah, I read multiple accounts of it, and
then they describe it differently, so and I couldn't ever
find one solid like here's even like a newspaper report
(14:51):
that seems to have solid reporting going on. So that's
what's up. South Africa was represented by two runners, Gentao
and Jan Mashani. Both were part of a group that
had been sent by South Africa to re enact segments
of the Boer War as an exhibit. They were both
part of the Bantu speaking Twana people, and they had
both been messengers during the war, a job that was
(15:14):
all running, so they were both very well conditioned for
the marathon, and they both ran at barefoot. Greece had
ten runners in the marathon, although none of them had
trained for the race, they were pretty clear that they
were there for fellowship with the other Olympians rather than
any sort of attempt at winning. Runner John Furlough was
(15:34):
Greek American. Although his citizenship was in the US, he
chose to run for Greece. Cuba was represented by a
man named Feligue's Carvajal, who had fundraised the money to
travel to the Games himself by staging a variety of
demonstrations in Cuba. In one of those, he ran from
one side of Cuba to the other in the course
of sixteen days. He also ran laps around city hall
(15:58):
in Havana as part of his effort to drum up money.
That was because he allegedly had been turned away from
a requested meeting with the mayor, so he ran those
laps to draw a crowd and get the mayor's attention,
and that trick apparently worked because the mayor's office paid
for his travel. Carver Hall was a mailman by trade,
(16:18):
but that doesn't really convey the endurance needed for the job.
He was a post runner. He was constantly on the
move and apparently ran a lot when he was doing
his roots. Like the South African competitors, he had also
been a messenger runner during military conflict, carrying messages for
General Maximo Gomez in the Cuban War of Independence. There
(16:39):
are a couple of different stories about carve Hall having
money issues en route to Saint Louis. One version says
that the mayor didn't give him enough to cover anything
but the fare he needed for transportation. Another version suggests
that when he stopped in New Orleans on the way
to the Olympic Games, he gambled all of his pocket
money a way way regardless, Carva Hall had to hitchhike
(17:03):
and walk his way to the competition. He also didn't
really get enough to eat. He was a pretty small guy,
reportedly five feet tall and one hundred pounds. He looked
apparently scrawny when he got to the expo and the games.
He also didn't have athletic clothes, and he ran in
a white button down shirt, a beret and his trousers
(17:24):
which had been cut short, either by Felix or by
another competitor that probably would have been American competitor Martin Sheridan.
They were concerned, reasonably so that he would overheat in
this clothing. He also just wore normal shoes to run in. Ye. Yeah,
there are pictures of him at the start line and
(17:46):
he looks essentially dressed for a day of business perhaps,
but his pants have been cut short. He still has
on like the full length stockings underneath them. Though. All right,
I'm going to give fair warning to any of our
listeners who run, because the course conditions that we're about
to talk about are flat out horrifying, and if you
are not a runner, some of it's a little bit gross.
(18:08):
Although we're not going to get supergraphic. So when the
race started at three zero three pm, it was ninety
degrees fahrenheit. That's thirty two point two degrees celsius, so
definitely not optimal running temperature. It was also very humid.
The race started in the Olympic Stadium that was filled
with an estimated ten thousand spectators, and then after five
(18:30):
laps around the track, the runners were routed out onto
the rest of the course, which was not today's regulation
length of twenty six point two miles. It was twenty
four point eighty five. At this point, the distance of
the marathon was still being tweaked as organizers kind of
sought the optimal distance. The course itself was made up
of an assortment of challenging conditions. According to an account
(18:53):
written by race official Charles Lucas, it included quote no
less than seven hills, varying from one hundred to three
hundred feet high, some with long ascents and others with
short ascents. Lucas wrote a book titled the Olympic Games
nineteen oh four, which he published in nineteen oh five,
and it's through his account that we have most of
(19:15):
the information regarding what went on during the marathon. Heads
up if you go looking for this book. He also
says some very racist stuff in it. Regarding this course,
he noted that the one in Saint Louis was quote
the most difficult a human being was ever asked to
run over. At Athens the road from the battlefield of Marathon,
(19:35):
and that at Paris were boulevards compared to the course
selected in Saint Louis. The running route once outside the
stadium was anything but uniform. Most of the segments of
it were incredibly dusty. Because of this late part of
the summer, some of them were covered in loose gravel,
and those dusty segments were brutal because although cars were
(19:57):
still kind of a new and novel invention at this
point point, there were some leading the runners along the course,
as well as carrying race staffers and coaches alongside the runners,
and those vehicles were kicking dust right into the runners'
faces while they were breathing heavily from exertions, so it
wasn't like they couldn't inhale it. This dust also obscured
(20:19):
their vision, and to top things off, this was not
a closed course, so runners were competing while they were
also looking out for street traffic and pedestrians. Hydration was
a whole story unto itself. If you run a marathon today,
you can reasonably expect at least eight water stations. They
(20:40):
may or may not include the option of a sports
drink with electrolytes. Some stops may even have quick energy
fuel like gels or gummies, occasionally even chocolate. That was
definitely not the case for the nineteen oh four Olympics, though,
there were only two water stations on the entire course,
two not eight. Two uh, and that is actually not
(21:05):
reported in all of the accounts. Lucas mentions only one
as being official. One was near the six mile mark,
where there was conveniently a water tower, and that may
or may not have been an official station. The other
was at the twelve mile mark, which Lucas mentioned, where
there was a well on the course. This meant that
the runners had to go at least half the race
(21:27):
without any water, and that well water did not agree
with everyone who drank it. A lot of the runners
had stomach issues after drinking it. That is all a
terrifying prospect, but it becomes really infuriating because this lack
of water stops was not something that happened because of
poor planning. It was done to those runners on purpose,
(21:50):
and that is because James Sullivan decided that this would
be a good opportunity to run an experiment to see
what dehydration would do to endurance athletes during my research
and stopped around the house in a full bore red
rage for quite a while after reading, Yeah, this could
have killed people. It almost did so. Despite all of
(22:11):
these issues with the course, most of the runners persevered.
When the race started, Fred Laures took the early lead.
Thomas Hicks passed him after just a short while. John
Lorden became nauseated and started to vomit and didn't complete
the race. He was there for less than a mile.
Within just a few miles, Miller was in the lead
(22:31):
group and Lores and Hicks had fallen back. Despite Lorden's
early dropout, the rest of the runners started fairly well,
but things quickly fell apart, and we're going to talk
about how after we paused for a sponsor break. As
(22:54):
the race left the stadium and got onto the dusty roadways,
Fred Lawres chugged along for nine miles, but then he
started experiencing cramps. He was loaded into a support vehicle
for transport, and he waved the crowds as he traveled
the route back to the stadium. Once he had apparently
dropped out, Hicks moved up a bit, but not enough
(23:14):
to overtake the leaders after the brief boost that they
all got from the second or perhaps first water stop
right around that middle marker. As the mile markers reached
into the teens, the field thimmed out quite a bit.
Sam Miller lost his lead also due to cramps, which
persisted to the point that he had to drop out.
(23:36):
Another US competitor, Henry Balley, stopped running and continued at
a walking pace, but another of the US runners, William Garcia,
made it nineteen miles before he just could go no further.
The dusty conditions meant that he had been inhaling huge
amounts of particulate as he ran. This took his toll
and he collapsed by the side of the course. Once
(23:59):
he was spotted on the ground, race officials got him
to emergency care. When Garcia was examined by a doctor,
it was determined that he had taken in so much
dust that he had damaged his esophagus and stomach and
was hemorrhaging internally. This was to the point that his
life was in danger. Because he had made it to
(24:20):
medical care his conditions stabilized, he did eventually recover. Gentoo
of South Africa was chased by a dog at one
point and ended up about a mile off course. He
still managed to finish ninth. His fellow South African delicate
Jan Mashiani, came in twelfth. Perhaps the only delightful runner's
(24:41):
story in this race is that of Cuban runner Felix Carbajal.
He may not have had proper attire, but he does
seem like he had a good time. He stopped on
occasion to chat with spectators. He asked some people at
one point if he could have one of the peaches
they were eating that They told him no, but he
(25:01):
just took two of them and ran, something that is
characterized in accounts as playful and not criminal. Given the
lack of supportive fluids on this course, this probably would
have helped save him from some physical issues. But according
to some accounts, he also picked some apples as he
ran and ate those turned out. Those apples, though, were bad.
(25:25):
They gave him terrible stomach cramps. Also, he took a
brief nap before getting back up and finishing the race.
I should say we don't have official documentation about that
apple and nap part, but given other things we know
about him, it really adds up. Although Hicks had started
pretty strong and had done well for the first several miles,
(25:47):
he started having some pretty serious issues well before the
halfway point. When he reached the ten mile mark, he
was so dehydrated that he needed to be carried by
two men, Charles Lucas, the race official who wrote the
count of the race, and Hugh McGrath, who was one
of the coaches that was in the supporting vehicles. They
became his two man crew for the remainder of the race.
(26:10):
They refused him water, though even when he begged, wanting
to stay true to the rules of Sullivan's experiment, the
most he got was a sponge with warm water daubed
around his mouth. Hicks continued with support, literally as his
two crew members held him up from either side for
parts of the race. You can find photos of him
(26:31):
clearly being propped up. At the twelve mile mark, he
got some water, which bullyed him for a while, but
soon he asked for an assist and this is where
his team gave him an elixir to keep going. That
is just difficult to believe. This was egg white mixed
with strychnine, which is a poison. At the time, minute
(26:54):
doses of strychnine were believed to be a performance enhancer.
The dose that was given to Hicks was a sixtieth
of a grain. It seems to have helped Hicks kept
moving although he was dispirited. While Hicks was being propelled
along by his team, they witnessed Lures whip by them
(27:14):
fresh as a daisy. The vehicle that had picked Fred
Laure's up when he had cramps had sputtered to a stop.
All of the dust had caused it to stall, and
at this point Laurs was feeling better, so he got
out and started running again. Hicks's men reportedly saw this
and yelled at Laurs that he couldn't do that, but
Laurs reportedly told them he was just going to run
(27:36):
back to the stadium and get help for that broken
down automobile. That was not what happened. When he got
to the stadium, he ran a lap around the track,
which is how the race finished, and then he crossed
the finish line to the cheers of the crowd, who
all believed that he was the winner. Lares's so called
victory had thrilled the spectators who thought they had just
(27:59):
seen the first US Olympic Marathon gold medalist finished the race.
That culminated in another podcast subject Alice Roosevelt crowning him
with the winner's wreath. Almost because someone in the crowd,
and it's not known who yelled the lawyers had cheated
(28:19):
his big moment unraveled because it was something that he
had not earned. He claimed he had just been joking
about having won the race. Yeah. Meanwhile, Hicks was still trying,
but he was in very rough shape. He was reportedly pale,
His eyes were described as dull and lustreless. His support
(28:41):
team gave him another dose of egg whites and strychnine,
this time with a brandy chaser. He was also bathed
in warm water head to toe from a bucket that
had been heated in the boiler of a steam engine car.
Hicks kept going, but he also fell into a complete delirium.
He was nearing the end, but he believed he had
(29:03):
another twenty miles to go after the last two hills,
which were near the end of the race, which he
walked up and then shuffled down. He reached the final mile,
but he begged his trainers to just let him lie down.
He also begged for food, and he was given two
more egg whites with brandy, although when another runner offered
(29:24):
him what is described in Lucas's record as beef tea,
so I'm assuming that's like a light broth, he was
not allowed to have it. While Lucas described Hicks as
kind of checked out mentally, he also described his gait
as quote running mechanically like a well oiled piece of machinery.
Hicks's finish was not the triumphant scenario that he was
(29:47):
probably envisioning. When he started the race. He was basically carried.
His feet were moving, but the two men who had
been with him at that point for more than fourteen
miles were physically holding him up up. Hicks collapsed as
he crossed the tape, falling into the arms of Thomas Riley,
who was one of the coaches for the American team.
(30:08):
The dehydrated Hicks reportedly weighed eight pounds less when he
finished the race than when he started, and he was
in really bad shape. It had taken him three hours,
twenty eight minutes fifty three seconds to finish this grueling race,
and he probably came close to dying on the course.
When the race was over, he was too weak to
(30:31):
receive his award. He did not leave the stadium area
for an hour, and during that time four doctors attended
to him. During that time, there were other finishers. Albert J.
Cory if Chicago came in second, Arthur Newton finished third,
and Carve Hall finished fourth. It's been estimated that carver
(30:51):
Hall's various stops to chat and nap cost him about
an hour of time, so he probably would have won
had he not done that, and it's a pity that
he finished out of the metallepool because he was probably
the best athlete in the race. It's worth noting that
he was also the only one out there who was
totally alone. He didn't have any fellow countrymen, he did
(31:12):
not have any support staff. He was just out having
a run and seemingly enjoying himself along the way. He
was described at the finish line as being quite fresh
and energetic and in good spirits and just a lot
livelier than any of the other athletes of the thirty
two men who started the race, only fourteen of them
finished it. Fred Laws was banned from the Amateur Athletic
(31:36):
Union for life, but that band did not hold. He
continued to assert that he had just been playing by
running that lap and crossing the finish line. Eventually, the
AAU reinstated him. He won the Boston Marathon the next year.
Charles Lucas made very clear in his book that he
thought very little of Laws, who he thought had tainted
(31:57):
the entire event with his fullness. Hicks's win was contested
by the Chicago Athletic Association, which had sent several runners
for the US team, and the charge there was that
he had been helped so very much for the majority
of the race that there really was no way to
claim that he had won through his own stamina or
power as a runner. But the Olympic referee, who had
(32:20):
paced Hicks by car throughout said that he won and
that it was an honest win, and that was the
end of that. As for any scientific findings, based on
the experimenting done during the race, Lucas came to the
conclusion that quote drugs are of much benefit to athletes
along the road, which just had a terrible conclusion to
(32:43):
come to you from that. Today, the nineteen oh four
marathon is considered the most chaotic such event in modern
Olympic history. I have so many things from behind the scenes.
Do you have listener mail? I do? I have two
(33:03):
pieces again, because one is very very short. This first
one is from Ben, who writes, greetings. I loved your
eponymous foods discussion on beef stroking off, and I'm probably
just piling onto a bunch of other comments, but I
wanted to note that Russia is part of Europe. You
mentioned the European influence as if Russia wasn't part of
Europe a couple times. This is actually funny because I
(33:25):
remember growing up and I was always I always got
the granted I grew up during Cold War, so uss
are at the time Asian part of Asian, but it
qualifies as both because parts of it are in Europe
and parts of it are in Asia. As we were
recording that, I had the same thought and I was like,
somebody's going to write to us about it really being
(33:46):
in Europe, and it's number one. These these boundaries are
arbitrary and largely made up, and a lot of them
have to do with like commonalities related to language and culture,
but also like that is very ill defined and vague,
and I've seen whole arguments about like the underlying biases
(34:10):
and things that are part of all of these divisions.
But yeah, as I was as we were recording, I
was like, it's both, so hopefully it'll be okay. Yeah. Yeah,
Also that there wasn't a pylon, but I just thought
I would read that because it's a good point because
we didn't talk about it in the episode. That's what's up.
(34:32):
The other is from our listener Heidi, who writes, I've
been an avid listener for years and greatly enjoyed your show.
It's become a weekly tradition to get caught up on
a long commute. My six year old daughter has a
rare genetic disease called metachromatic leukodystrophe or MLD. I Hope
I said that right. Each week we travel to the
University of Iowa for an experimental treatment to help slow
(34:52):
the progression of the disease and hopefully improve the quality
and length of her life. Children with late infantile MLD
typically pass before the age of ten. This commute is
four hours round trip and listening to you makes the
drive something I look forward to you each week. Today,
while driving home from the university, I listened to the
episode on Eponymous Foods and Behind the Scenes Mini, both
(35:12):
of which struck on things from my own life. I
studied Russian in high school and college. While in high school,
I had the opportunity to travel to Saint Petersburg in Moscow.
Saint Petersburg was amazing, and I clearly remember walking down
the street when our tour guide pointed at this ornate
green building and said, that's where beef Stroganoff was invented.
I snapped a picture of it, and as soon as
(35:33):
I got home today I bolted to my basement to
dig it out and send it to you. This was
in the infancy of digital photography, so I apologize that
it's a picture of a picture. By the way, the
picture looks fine. I was surprised to find out from
the episode that this was likely not the precise location
of its origin. Nonetheless, it is still the Stroganoff Palace,
and by that virtue worthy of note. I had hoped
(35:55):
to try authentic beef stroganof while in Russia. I did
not get the opportunity, but I did have several other
amazing and rather interesting foods. The other food you mentioned
with which I have a personal connection is capt'n Crunch.
I am originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which is one
of and perhaps the only location Captain Crunch is made.
I had to laugh at your oops Alberry's reference. Cedar
(36:17):
Rapids tagline is the city of five seasons, and this
is often jokingly changed to the city of five smells.
There are several factories, including Quaker Oats and Cedar Rapids,
that are responsible for its unique and rather unpleasant aroma.
We oftentimes joke that the only day Cedar Rapid smells
good is on Sunday because this is crunch berry Day.
(36:39):
I'm not one hundred percent sure if this was true
or is still true today, but on Sundays I do
remember downtown smelling a little more pleasant. In addition to
the crunch berries, my grandmother made dolls and puppets and
was actually asked to design the cap'n but she decided
not to take on the commission. She later said she
regretted this not only because of the cereals eventual popularity,
(36:59):
but because she did not like the finished product. Had
she designed it, no doubt the Captain would look very
different today. I sadly don't have any pets to send
photos of, but I did take a photo of my daughter.
She herself is making history by contributing to research on
this treatment that will hopefully improve the lives of other
children with MLD after her. We are taking her and
(37:20):
her brother's to Disneyland in a few weeks and we
are so excited. She smiles so big when we talk
about how she gets to go to the Bibittybobbity boutique
and get the royal treatment. Thank you for always providing
a world with entertainment that is both inclusive and informative.
You give me hope and joy often in the moments
I need it most. Give me all choked up, Heidi,
I hope you guys have an amazing time in Disneyland.
(37:42):
By the way, your daughter is adorable and she is
going to be so cute once she is coded in
all of the Bibittybobby glitter. That is one of my
favorite things. Even though I am very openly not a
big kid person, there is nothing better than seeing children
like full glitter everything when come out of there, it
is so joyous. I love it. This also gave me
(38:04):
a hilarious flashback, Tracy. I don't think you moved to
Atlanta in time to experience the delight of the free
Doo lay factory that used to be in Shambley. No,
where the Low's is in that Brookhaven Shambly kind of
crossover area used to be the Freeedo lay factory. And
I used to work very near there and it would
(38:24):
smell like chili cheese doritos some days, and I did
not find that gross at all. I loved it. So
thinking about a town that smells like oatmeal and sugar
cereals being made all the time actually sounds pretty good
to me. But Heidi, I wanted to thank you for
this because one I'm stroking off that might have been
the building where it was invented. We don't know. You
(38:47):
could say that. I think that's fine, And again, I
hope your trip is amazing. Disneyland is one of the
many places I love, love, love, I hope you eat
all the Ronto wraps for me while you're there. If
you like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also
find us as missed in History on social media, and
(39:07):
if you haven't subscribed, you can do that on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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