June 12, 2024 • 40 mins
The 1904 St. Louis Olympics featured the strangest sporting event in history. During the marathon, runners paused for naps, got chased by dogs, went apple picking, and doped with rat poison — all while being unwitting participants in a cruel scientific experiment.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original. It's August nineteen oh four
and we're at the Summer Olympics in Saint Louis, Missouri.
The stadium is full of thousands of spectators and they're
(00:30):
bristling with excitement. The Olympics' biggest race, the marathon, is
about to start.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Runners, take your remarks.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Down on the track. A field of thirty one runners
huddle by the starting line.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Get set.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
The athlete tail from Greece, France, Cuba, South Africa and
the US, and looking down you can see that some
of them are already working up a sweat. It's three
oh three in the afternoon, during the height of summer,
and the mercury says it's ninety degrees fahrenheit. The race begins.
(01:15):
Fred Lure's, a bricklayer by day and runner by night,
takes the lead. In the middle of the pack is
Thomas Hicks, a brass worker who recently took second at
the Boston Marathon. And there's the dark horse, Felix de
Lacari dot carvajal Esoto, a beret wearing Cuban who appears
(01:38):
to be running in clogs. It's just the start of
the wackiest, the wildest, and the worst Olympic Marathon ever
because over the next twenty some miles, the runners will
take naps, be chased by dogs, go apple picking, dope
(02:02):
with rat poison, and quite literally eat each other's dust.
Welcome to very special episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm
your host Danish words and this is famous dumpster fires
(02:24):
in history the nineteen o four Olympic Marathon. So are
you guys excited for the Paris Olympics.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I am Dana.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
I love opening ceremonies like I'm just the pageantry has
got me.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
What about you, Jason?
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Oh yeah, the very non ironic enjoyment of the Olympics
and the opening ceremonies. When we were at mental floss,
my favorite project of the Olympic year would be trying
to find an amazing fact about every country in the
Parade of Nations and then we would share them on
social media in real time.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yes, I love an opening ceremony when they just lean
into like the broadest cultural stereotype of what their nation is.
So I'm really hoping France is just like waving baguettes around.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
They have boats. It's a boat parade. It's a boat parade.
Are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Sounds fun?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Now?
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Well, the nations have all the same boats or will
they have boats that indicate their nation?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
That's a good question. Another reason I'm excited to tune
in and watch. I can't wait to see this.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
Well, we can go very narrow on the Olympics with
one fact about every country, or we could go really
deep like we are today's episode.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, this entire episode is just a fun fact about
an Olympics that I knew nothing about.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
But do you guys like to run? Do either one
of you guys?
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Like?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Were you drawn to the marathon aspect?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
I'm a terrible runner. I occasionally jog and I hate
every minute of it.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
What about you, Jason? Not much of a runner?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Are you? Could you do a marathon?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Oh? Hell no.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
I always say that I would need either a ball
or a gun to run. That's those are the two
conditions for me. Now I do have this front. Dave
Kim he once showed up to the LA Marathon without
any training whatsoever, signed up that morning, ran the whole
damn thing. Oh oh yeah, he's the spirit of these people.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I do love just the showing up and like the
attitude of how hard could it be?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yes, exactly, he was. It's like, what is it? What
twenty six thirty miles? I could do this? I'm like, yeah, shitty, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
It sounds like a nightmare. I would never run a
marathon in my life. I think you can put me
on the record and say I'll never run a marathon.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
I just kept thinking of the Beastie Boys song Intergalactic,
I'm a man ed rock saying from the Hudson River
out to the Nile, run the marathon to the very
last mile.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I was like, not me, brother, I couldn't run a
marathon in perfect conditions, let alone when it's conditions like this.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Oh yeah, these are so brutal. But folks are in
for a treat with this one, all right, why don't
we get into it.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Back to nineteen oh four, where thirty one runners are
trotting under the scorching sun. The race has just begun.
The athletes take a few laps around a cinder track
and then exit the stadium, heading out on to a
road course that loops through the Missouri countryside. They don't
(05:11):
get far before realizing this is going to be a problem.
Speaker 6 (05:17):
They didn't block off traffic.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
That's Susan brown Ow.
Speaker 6 (05:21):
I'm a professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri
Saint Louis.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Susan is an Olympics expert. In fact, back in the day,
she used to compete internationally in the heptathlon. Susan explains
that the nineteen oh four marathon course was a total mess.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
I think when you look at the nineteen oh four marathon,
there's some stuff that's pretty appalling.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
To start, the course was never closed to traffic. People
in their jalopies continued using the roads, forcing runners to
play a twenty five mile long game of Frogger. But frankly,
the risk of getting flattened was the least of anybody's worries.
(06:12):
The worst part was the dust.
Speaker 6 (06:17):
They mapped out a course that was essentially on dirt roads,
and it didn't occur to anybody that maybe driving your
old fashioned cars alongside the athletes might stir up even
more dust than would have been there otherwise.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
A thick layer of powdery dust coated the Saint Louis roads,
and with each passing car, a plume of dust rose
into the air.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
It's just one big dust cloud the whole way.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
It's hard to overstate just how bad this dust was.
Earlier that summer, there had been an automobile race on
these same streets. The dust clouds were so thick that
drivers couldn't see where they were going, leading to a
fatal crash. For some reason, Olympic organizers didn't learn any
(07:12):
lessons from that tragedy. Instead, they followed the same formula
and enlisted dozens of drivers to accompany the runners. The
cars carried scientists, trainers, and medical professionals, and they surrounded
the runners on all sides. One person in the caravan
(07:34):
was Charles Lucas.
Speaker 7 (07:36):
He would later write dust filled the air and more
or less carried into the stomach and lungs of the
athletes as they were compelled to run with their mouths open.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Just a half mile outside of the stadium, runners began
hacking out their lungs. Dust burned, their eyes, clogged their noses,
coated their throats. In the words of one observer quote,
the blinding, choking dust, combined with the august heat quote,
(08:08):
bakes the tongue and grips the wind like a vice.
Some runners had to run off the road to escape
the cloud and catch their breaths. One of the race's favorites,
John Lorden, who had previously won the Boston Marathon, barely
made it eight hundred yards before he had to pull
(08:29):
over to the side of Forsyth Road and spill his lunch.
The runners were just two miles in and it was
about to get worse, much worse.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
So in the midst of this ill conceived spectacle, you've
got supposedly this scientific experiment going on.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
The science experiment, Susan mentions, is the brainchild of John Sullivan.
Speaker 6 (08:59):
He controlled almost every aspect of sports, organizing the big events,
organizing the Olympic Games.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Sullivan was the most powerful man in American sports. In
charge of organizing the nineteen oh four Olympics, he wanted
to use the marathon race to test a theory he
called purposeful dehydration.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
The idea was that the marathon runners shouldn't drink along
the course.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, so Sullivan believed that athletes performed better without water. Now,
I want to remind you it's August thirtieth. It's more
than ninety degrees fahrenheit outside, it's humid. The marathon length
of twenty six point two miles hadn't been standardized yet,
(09:53):
but still this race was long. It's forty kilometers or
twenty four point eighty five miles. So what does Sullivan do.
He places one, just one water stop along the racecourse,
a well at the twelve mile mark. Right now, the
(10:17):
runners are just two miles into the race. They're dodging traffic,
hacking up their lungs, but they can barely see the
road they're running on, and the oppressive Missouri summer heat
is closing in on them from all sides. And now
they've got ten more miles before they can get a
(10:40):
sip of relief. This is a good spot to back
up and explain why the nineteen o four Olympic Marathon
was such a dumpster fire. To start, it's nineteen oh four.
This was the third Olympics ever, and it was the
first time America hosted. Back then, most people didn't know
(11:04):
or care much about the Olympics, so the Games were
packaged with something people did care about.
Speaker 6 (11:12):
The nineteen oh four Olympics took place within the context
of the World's Fair in Saint Louis.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
The World's Fair in nineteen oh four Saint Louis was
hosting a month's long festival in celebration of the Louisiana purchase.
And this was a much bigger deal than the Olympics.
Speaker 6 (11:34):
The World's Fair at that time had pageantry, you know,
way beyond anything, but Olympic Games had. The sports events
were sort of just a minor side show.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
The Olympics basically piggybacked on the Fair's popularity, and the
Fair used the Olympics as a launch pad for a
slew of weird experiments. Take for example, the fact that
the Fair hosted more than fourteen hundred indigenous people from
all over the world and put them on display. Walking
(12:07):
through the village, you could meet African pygmies, Patagonians, Japanese
anus Inuits. James Sullivan saw this and figured, hey, while
we got him here, let's do some experiments.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
Sullivan was a pretty committed racist. He wanted to prove that,
in fact, the civilized white man was physically superior to
the savage, so he concocted this idea of an event
that would actually test it.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
The idea was called Anthropology Days.
Speaker 6 (12:43):
They would have the natives who were on display at
the fair do sports and the performances, but would be
recorded and then those performances would be compared against those
in the Olympic Games to see who was physically superior.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Indigenous people did the one hundred yard dash, ran the mile,
and tried the broad jump. They even tossed around a baseball.
Speaker 6 (13:11):
Apparently it was the most popular event because many of
the natives had never seen a baseball before and they
just really wanted to give it a try.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
But overall, the natives didn't take the events seriously, namely
because they had no training or preparation or interest.
Speaker 6 (13:28):
You've got these natives who don't want to be there anyway.
They've never done the sport, they don't speak English very well,
and they don't understand what's expected of them.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
So most indigenous people just treated the whole thing as
a joke, which, by the way, upset James Sullivan a lot.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
The pygmies from Africa were full of mischief. They took
nothing seriously.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
However, we should point out there was one competition where
the indigenous people flourished, an event called pole climbing, where
athletes had to climb a fifty foot pole.
Speaker 6 (14:07):
Three of the competitors, who were from the Philippines, beat
the American record by as much as ten seconds.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Sullivan, who was also the editor in chief of the
Spauldings Sports Almanac and was in control of all record keeping,
never included that little statistic in the record book. The
point is James Sullivan was a schmuck. He had a
lot of, let's say, questionable ideas, and he used the
(14:36):
nineteen oh four Olympics as his personal laboratory. And the
runners in the marathon, they were his unwitting guinea pigs.
Of all of the men competing in the nineteen oh
four Olympic marathon, there was one athlete who may have
(14:58):
been best equipped to handle the heat, the traffic, and
even perhaps the lack of water.
Speaker 8 (15:06):
Was they leak Scarbahll of Cuba a real care.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
That's David Walachinski. He is one of the founding members
of the International Society of Olympic Historians Carba Hall.
Speaker 8 (15:20):
He he just got this idea that he was going
to go to the Olympics in Saint Louis and he
was going to run in the marathon.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
During the Cuban War of Independence, he was a courier
who delivered letters on the run and he had an
Olympic dream. So he visited the mayor of Havana, asking
the government to fund his trip to Saint Louis. The
local government refused, but carver Hall didn't give up. Instead,
(15:49):
he protested by running all day around the Mayor's palace.
A crowd gathered men smoking cigars sat around placing bets
on how long the crazy man would last. The mayor
looked outside to see who was causing the ruckus and
changed his mind. He gave carver Hall the money. The
(16:13):
Cuban took a boat to New Orleans and the temptations
of the Big Easy drew him in. Carver Hall decided
to do a little gambling, and during a game of craps,
he lost everything but the shirt off his back. Literally,
he had no other clothes, and now carver Hall was
(16:35):
stuck with no money left to travel the six hundred
ish miles to Saint Louis. He had no choice but
to walk the rest of the way.
Speaker 8 (16:46):
So he then hitchhiked to Saint Louis and carver Hall
arrived on the starting line with wearing boots, large shoes,
long pants.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
On the day of the race, everybody came wearing proper
running shorts and spiked shoes, but carver Hall a five
foot tall Cuban who weighed one hundred and twenty pound
pound soaking wet, arrived wearing a beret, a suit jacket,
clumsy two pound shoes, and long trousers.
Speaker 8 (17:16):
He just was inappropriate, and so they delayed the start
of the race while an American athlete got some scissors
and cut off Carbahall's pants so that he at least
had shorts.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Carbo Hall would keep the torn off pieces of his pants.
These were his only pair of pants and he wanted
to sew them back together after the race. Despite the
rough start, Carba Hall was physically speaking one of the
top competitors, but he was also too friendly for his
own good. As he ran the dusty streets outside Saint Louis,
(17:52):
he became captivated by the crowds assembled on the roadside, and.
Speaker 8 (17:57):
Carbo Hall he had a great time. He would stop
as he went around and talk to people.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
As the other runners ran by him. Carbon Hall was
happily practiced his broken English. It also didn't help that
carver Hall, who had spent the last week hitchhiking, hadn't
eaten anything over the previous two days, so when he
passed an orchard, he decided to take a detour. The
(18:23):
New York Evening World described what happened next.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Carvagel's stomach empty as a collapsed balloon was rubbing against
his spine over the fence, He climbed and stuffed himself
with fruit.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
A pack of thirteen runners past carbon Hall as he
spent a half hour jumping at tree limbs trying to
knock down green apples.
Speaker 8 (18:47):
I don't say that Carbo Hall really cared about winning.
He was somebody who enjoyed experience and he loved meeting people,
so whether he finished first, fourth, or twelfth didn't really
matter to him. He just wanted to have a good time,
which he did.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Carba Hall gorged himself on apples and eventually got back
to the race. Other competitors weren't so lucky. The heat
and dust started to get to people. At mile seven,
Franklin Pierce, the first Native American to compete for the
(19:24):
US in the Olympics, collapsed. Not long after, a runner
from New York felt his leg seize with cramps and
he dropped out. A mile or two down the road.
Another runner felt his stomach lurch and he consecrated the
road with his vomit. He dropped out too. Meanwhile, other
(19:47):
runners were getting sidetracked for other reasons. Take for instance,
Lentau and Jan Mashiani of South Africa.
Speaker 8 (19:56):
And they had come over not to compete in the Olympics,
but because they were part of the Boer War exhibit
at the World's Fair.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Lentau and Yamashiani were Swana tried tribesmen. They had never
run a marathon before, but they had worked as messengers
during the Boer War in Africa. Just a few years
earlier in Saint Louis, they were putting on battle re
enactments of the war and even took part in the
Anthropology Day's event.
Speaker 8 (20:25):
When they heard that there was going to be this
big running race, they figured, well, let's enter.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
The two men ran well, and frankly they probably could
have performed better, but.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
One of them was run off the course for a while,
chased by dogs.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Lenau was chased a mile off course because a dog
was nipping at his heels. Meanwhile, the purposeful dehydration experiment
was destroying the other runners. By mile nine, a runner
from Brooklyn had dropped out from nausea. The racers from
Greece began to drop faster than Icarus from the sky
(21:06):
and lures. The nineteen year old bricklayer from New York,
who was one of the race's favorites, was so overcome
with cramps that he had to call it quits and
get into a car. By the time the racers reached
the official water well at mile twelve, the crowd of
runners was already thin, and then they started to get
(21:30):
stomach aches. Here again is Charles Lucas, who witnessed the race.
Speaker 9 (21:36):
The visiting athletes were not accustomed to the water, and
as a consequence, many suffered from intestinal disorders.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
The local water, in other words, gave some athletes what
long distancers affectionately call runners trots. Among the afflicted was
the runner from Cuba, Carvea Hall. The apples he had
poached earlier were not sitting well, so he took a nap.
(22:09):
Carver Hall wasn't the only person who wanted a breather.
The brass worker Thomas Hicks, who was near the front
of the pack, was feeling the heat.
Speaker 8 (22:19):
And he started to you know, almost fate, and so
he had to lie down. This shows you how different
things are, you know, he had to lie down on
the road.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Hicks had a team of trainers in a car traveling
by his side. He desperately begged them for water, but
his trainers were big believers in the purposeful dehydration experiment too,
they refused, so Hicks got up and chugged on and
as other runners began dropping like flies, he was fighting
(22:52):
for the top spot. But at mile fifteen Hicks was
starting to flag again. He turned to his team for help.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
Thomas Hicks was begging for water by the end, and
didn't give him any water.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Instead, they gave him a sponge bath, and then they
reached for a little brown bottle with the word poison
stamped on it.
Speaker 8 (23:19):
His handlers then revived him by giving him repeated doses
of strict.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Nine strychnine sulfate to be exact, which you might know
as rat poison.
Speaker 8 (23:31):
Strychnine is very popular in murder mysteries because it was
often used to kill people, and you know, in small
doses it was a stimulant, but in large doses it
was a wonderful murder weapon still is.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
In small doses, strychnine sulfate can cause muscle spasms, which
in theory, can boost athletic performance without killing you. So
with the help of his trainers, Thomas Hicks began doping
in the middle of the race with Rodentici, which by
the way, was perfectly legal back then. Hicks continued on.
(24:14):
More racers dropped out, and then around mile nineteen, a
runner named William Garcia started coughing up blood. The heat,
the lack of water, and the dust had hit the
California runner hard. A horrific pain gripped his stomach as
(24:36):
he dropped to the road. Garcia's esophagus was coated with
dust and it had settled in his stomach, causing a hemorrhage.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
They had to be rushed to the emergency room. That
had ruptured his esophagus, and his life was saved only
by emergency surgeries.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Garcia would spend days in the hospital, clinging to life.
The field was getting thinner by the minute. Thomas Hicks
was now in the lead, with Albert Cory, a Frenchman,
a mile behind him, and then the Cuban woke from
his nap, apparently healed of food poisoning. He began running
(25:20):
with purpose. Here's the New York Evening World's account.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
He was eighteen sixteenth. He forged nearer the front, running
with dogged, unrelenting courage. A few miles from the finish,
he was coming fast. He was tenth, ninth, eighth, seven sixth.
The crowd began looking over its programs and whispering the
cuban's name.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Carver Hall was in good spirits. He ran past the
car carrying Charles Lucas and saw the men inside were
gorging themselves on peaches. Hey, can I have one of those?
The cuban asked, running beside the car. The men shook
their heads no. Carver Hall smiled and reached through the
open window, grabbing two peaches, and ran away, joyfully eating
(26:03):
the fruits as he ran. The finish was within five miles.
Thomas Hicks was still in the lead, but frankly, he
looked like a guy running on rap poison. Here's a
report from the Oshkosh Northwestern.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
He was no longer a runner. His muscles had ceased
to respond over a bell. He was a machine, and
a weak and tottering one, slowly and heavily. His numb
feet came down, His head rolled weakly on his shoulders.
The cramped muscles were drawn up in knots. His face
was lined by exhaustion. Into the semblance of an old
man and caked with dust.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
And then all of a sudden a new runner overtook him.
It wasn't Albert Cory, the Frenchman, and it wasn't the
Cuban Carver hal though he was gaining. It was a
runner named Fred Lores, the same guy who miles ago
had gotten into a car After sitting in the comfort
(27:04):
of an automobile for an hour. Laures had rejoined the
race and had taken the lead. Charles Lucas, who was
literally following the race in his car, saw Laures get
out and accosted him.
Speaker 9 (27:19):
Get off the road, laws.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
You're out of the race. How do you know him?
Out of the race?
Speaker 9 (27:23):
Why we saw you riding in a car?
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Is that so?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Laures claimed that the car had broken down and he
was just running back to the stadium.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I'm going to run in that's all.
Speaker 9 (27:36):
But you'll interfere with the runners.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
What do I care?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Soon, Lures, with fresh legs, pulled ahead of Lucas and
the front runner Hicks. Discouraged, Hicks turned to his trainers
and asked if he could just lay down and rest.
They refused. Instead, they handed him two raw egg whites
with another small dose of strychnine sulfate.
Speaker 6 (28:05):
But they also had in his case, we're going to
try to give him a little brandy if it got
too bad and brandy.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
According to Charles Lucas, the combination of raw eggs, rat
poison and booze did not appear to help Hicks.
Speaker 9 (28:23):
His eyes were dull, lustiless, the ashen collar of his
face and skin had deepened. His arms appeared as weight
well tied down. He could scarcely lift his legs, while
his knees were almost stiff.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
This put it mildly. Hicks was beginning to hallucinate. Visions
of food flashed before his eyes.
Speaker 6 (28:49):
And so at the end he was actually begging for
the brandy because he was so thirsty.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
At mile twenty one, hicks team obliged. They gave him
two more raw egg whites, another shot of brandy, another
pinch of strychnine sulfate, plus a steam ming spongebath heated
by the car's radiator. With that, Hicks seemed invigorated and
trudged on. Meanwhile, spectators at the stadium were going wild.
(29:20):
A runner had just entered the track.
Speaker 8 (29:22):
The first person into the stadium after three hours. If
you were somebody who knew American, you might have wondered
where arty. The first person was an American named Fred Lurtz,
and he looked very fresh.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Laws entered through the east gate and galloped to the
finish line to rock as applause.
Speaker 8 (29:42):
He was shaking the hands of Alice Roosevelt, the President's daughter,
when somebody pointed out that he had actually taken a
break from running and spent eleven miles in an automobile.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Confronted by his lie, Laws admitted that he had cheated
and claimed it was all just a practical joke. As
Booze rained down on Low Thomas Hicks was walking the
last of two large hills near the stadium. As he entered,
the crowd cheered. According to the Saint Louis Dispatch, the
(30:20):
runner didn't look too good.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
His feet dumped so regularly, so heavily, his frame shook
so joltingly. His lower jaw was hanging as an imbecility.
His eyes stared blankly.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Hicks trainers gave him more brandy and eggs as he
shuffled pathetically toward the home stretch. Over the last straightaway.
Two people had to help him walk over the finish line.
As he broke the tape, he fell into the people's arms.
Speaker 8 (30:53):
There's a wonderful photograph of Hicks, who looks completely out
of it from his strychnine and brandy.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Hicks's final time was three hours, twenty eight minutes and
fifty three seconds, which is easily the slowest winning time
in Olympic history. In fact, Hicks's pace was almost two
times slower than the pace run by the winner of
the last Olympic marathon, elud Kipchoge of Kenya. Regardless, Hicks
(31:28):
was the winner, and he did not care. The man
was in a complete daze rat poison and brandy. Notwithstanding,
he had also lost eight pounds. He was carted away
to see a doctor without even touching the trophy. Six
minutes later, the Frenchman Albert Corey would enter the stadium,
(31:50):
according to one observer, fresh as a daisy and full
of sprint. Then Arthur Newton of New York, shortly after
Carba Hall of Cuba entered the stadium. Blinded by dust
and sweat. He crossed the finish line and ran a
full extra lap before somebody told him he was allowed
to stop. Observers later noted that had carvea Hal not
(32:15):
gone on a side quest picking apples, talking to strangers
and napping, he would have finished a full hour earlier.
Of the thirty one racers who started the nineteen oh
four marathon, only fourteen finished. Lentau of South Africa finished ninth,
(32:37):
which was pretty good considering he was chased off course
by dogs. As for strychnine, it wasn't the last time
it'd be used during the Olympics.
Speaker 6 (32:47):
At the twenty sixteen Rio Olympics, there was a metal
winner in weightlifting who was actually disqualified after testing positive
for strychnin.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Fred Lews would receive a lifetime ban for cheating. The sentence, however,
was short lived. The following year, Lures was reinstated and
won the Boston Marathon, this time with his legs. Albert Corey,
the silver medalist from France, would go on to win
the Chicago Marathon in nineteen o eight. He trained for
(33:19):
the race by drinking wine. In fact, he made two
stops during his winning run for wine breaks. Thomas Hicks,
the gold medal winner, continued running marathons, winning the Chicago
race in nineteen o six. Later he became this is
true a clown. James Sullivan, despite organizing the most poorly
(33:44):
run marathon in Olympic history, continued to believe that drinking
water was bad for you, and Felix Carvehall would be
sent to compete in the nineteen o eight Olympic Games
in Athens, Greece. On the boat over, he disappeared and
was presumed dead. Months after his obituary was written. He
(34:07):
reappeared alive and well in Cuba and became a professional
marathon runner. He routinely came in last place, but was
always the crowd favorite.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
And that was a very special episode. Before we get
into our usual banter, I want to say it's been
a Newsy couple weeks here since our last episode. Zaren
got married. Congratulations, Thank you guys. Yes, I got the
jewelry and everything. Producer Josh got engaged here, congratulations. Yeah, Dana,
can we announce a book deal movie?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
What's going on in your corner?
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
You know, always a secret backlog of projects that I
probably can't announce, but just know I'm funny.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Busy, excellent, excellent, love it.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
Back to the marathon, Zaren, have your wheels been turning on?
The casting here I did.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
I did a little casting on this, so I tried
to keep it young for these are big athlete. So
for Fred Laws the bricklayer, the cheater guy, I thought
Finn Wolfhart, that brunette kid with the floppy hair from
Stranger Things. Oh yeah, you like that, okay. And after
Thomas Hicks the rat poison eater, I was thinking Glenn Powell,
(35:22):
that guy from Hitman and the Top Gun Maverick. Can't
you see him in that?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
He's charming and he wins. So he's like, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
You want him to win. That guy.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
You're like, all right at the end of the movie,
You're like, okay, this guy deserves it.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
You're like, he's taking rat poison. Let's give it to
him right exactly.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
And he could do that with a smile. Now.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Felix Carvehaal the beret clad Apple Gorgean peacheat and Cuban yep.
I was thinking I couldn't find somebody young for him,
so I thought a cgi d aged Gail Garcia Bernal.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Oh, he would be so good, right.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
The spirit is there.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
You just get like scorse Ace and thelm Machina Macker
on it boom done. And finally for James Sullivan, the
scientific racist. I apologize for casting you this way, brother,
But Austin Butler, the guy who played Elvis and the
Pilot in a World War two series that on Apple
was Masters of Air.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
That cat, I think he can nail it. That's great, right,
does that work?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Who's your very special character of this episode?
Speaker 4 (36:17):
I mean, I think it has to be Felix Carvehall.
I mean, my man shows up in a beret, two
pound boots, suit, jacket, I'm guessing wool trousers. I love
this guy. He's like, yeah, I get cut them off
and he keeps the pant legs. I mean, come on,
I love that guy.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
What about y'all.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
There's a photo of him at the at the marathon
just it looks like he's in normal clothes and a
little hat. It's sort of the sweetest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
I love this guy. I've sentily heard about him.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
It reminds me of that viral tweet that goes around
every Olympics about like every event should have one normal
person pulled off the streets and made to compete just
so you see how amazing it is what everyone else
is doing well.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
That was basically what James Sullivan wanted to do, right,
but he did it with indigenous people part of his
scientific racism. Now, if you set aside the scientific racism
of anthropology days and the human zoos and all that,
the world's fair. This story is hilarious. Now you have
to set James Sullivan aside. But with him aside, I
love this story.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, minus the racism and the human guinea pigs. Yeah,
it's a really really sweet story of human endurance.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
But the running twelve miles without water while gobbling rat poison?
How did they think this was gonna go?
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Just trust me on it, Trust me on this theory.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Here, I had an old ass, a high schooled football trainer,
Doc Woods. Right, this guy I by dislocated my jawn
a game. He just with one good whack of his fist,
he reset my jaw like on the sideline.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
I'm like, yeah, perfect. That was the spirit of the
medicine of this time.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Oh my god, I can't believe that happened.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Oh yeah, totally still clicks.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
But whatever, I will say, this episode just reinforces my
commitment to never running America. I think that's very clear.
It's something that I just will never do, and that's
that's fine. I think I'm gonna live a life very
happy without ever having to deal with that.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Yeah, you can just eat the peaches, eat the apples,
do the farm to table part that Felix does, and
then you're good.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I just I'll eat peaches. I'll go to the farmer's market.
There's easier ways to get peaches.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Exactly my late breaking very special character nominee. I'm gonna
go with Zaron's friend Dave Kim, Was it Dave Kimoom?
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, hell yeah it is.
Speaker 5 (38:28):
I think he brings the spirit of this into the
modern day. I love it.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
It's very sweet.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
What about you, Dana?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I mean, should we go with the rats who aren't poisoned?
Speaker 1 (38:38):
The rats?
Speaker 2 (38:40):
The rats in Saint Louis who are like, oh, real
shortage of poison. Recently we've been doing pretty well.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Shout out to the rats of Saint Louis.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Shout out to the rats getting a reprieve.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
I'll say one more thing before we wrap here. We
have a show email Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com.
People have been writing in with just their short ideas
for episodes, and we haven't fact.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Checked any of them yet.
Speaker 5 (39:05):
But some great stuff here that I really hope is true.
And if we get a handful and they make it
through fact Checker Austin's gauntlet, then maybe we'll do a
mailbag episode later. So Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com.
Do you have an amazing story, perhaps we'll read it,
or you'll fool us and we'll look bad.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I think if it gets through the fact checker and
they fool us, they should get it. Anyway, that's good
for them. They wrote a convincing yarn.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
We'd still love to just read it.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and
me Jason English. Today's episode was written by Lucas Riley.
Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by
Emily Maronoff, Mixing and mastering by Beheid Fraser. Our story
(40:01):
editor is Marisa Brown. Original music by Alis McCoy. Research
in fact by Austin Thompson and Lucas Riley. Show logo
by Lucy Quintonia. Special thanks to Carl Catle and Josh
Fisher for their metalworthy voice acting.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
I'm your executive producer.
Speaker 5 (40:19):
If you'd like to email the show for any reason,
we can be reached at very Special Episodes at gmail
dot com. Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original. It's August nineteen oh four
and we're at the Summer Olympics in Saint Louis, Missouri.
The stadium is full of thousands of spectators and they're
(00:30):
bristling with excitement. The Olympics' biggest race, the marathon, is
about to start.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Runners, take your remarks.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Down on the track. A field of thirty one runners
huddle by the starting line.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Get set.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
The athlete tail from Greece, France, Cuba, South Africa and
the US, and looking down you can see that some
of them are already working up a sweat. It's three
oh three in the afternoon, during the height of summer,
and the mercury says it's ninety degrees fahrenheit. The race begins.
(01:15):
Fred Lure's, a bricklayer by day and runner by night,
takes the lead. In the middle of the pack is
Thomas Hicks, a brass worker who recently took second at
the Boston Marathon. And there's the dark horse, Felix de
Lacari dot carvajal Esoto, a beret wearing Cuban who appears
(01:38):
to be running in clogs. It's just the start of
the wackiest, the wildest, and the worst Olympic Marathon ever
because over the next twenty some miles, the runners will
take naps, be chased by dogs, go apple picking, dope
(02:02):
with rat poison, and quite literally eat each other's dust.
Welcome to very special episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm
your host Danish words and this is famous dumpster fires
(02:24):
in history the nineteen o four Olympic Marathon. So are
you guys excited for the Paris Olympics.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I am Dana.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
I love opening ceremonies like I'm just the pageantry has
got me.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
What about you, Jason?
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Oh yeah, the very non ironic enjoyment of the Olympics
and the opening ceremonies. When we were at mental floss,
my favorite project of the Olympic year would be trying
to find an amazing fact about every country in the
Parade of Nations and then we would share them on
social media in real time.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yes, I love an opening ceremony when they just lean
into like the broadest cultural stereotype of what their nation is.
So I'm really hoping France is just like waving baguettes around.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
They have boats. It's a boat parade. It's a boat parade.
Are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Sounds fun?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Now?
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Well, the nations have all the same boats or will
they have boats that indicate their nation?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
That's a good question. Another reason I'm excited to tune
in and watch. I can't wait to see this.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
Well, we can go very narrow on the Olympics with
one fact about every country, or we could go really
deep like we are today's episode.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, this entire episode is just a fun fact about
an Olympics that I knew nothing about.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
But do you guys like to run? Do either one
of you guys?
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Like?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Were you drawn to the marathon aspect?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
I'm a terrible runner. I occasionally jog and I hate
every minute of it.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
What about you, Jason? Not much of a runner?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Are you? Could you do a marathon?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Oh? Hell no.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
I always say that I would need either a ball
or a gun to run. That's those are the two
conditions for me. Now I do have this front. Dave
Kim he once showed up to the LA Marathon without
any training whatsoever, signed up that morning, ran the whole
damn thing. Oh oh yeah, he's the spirit of these people.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I do love just the showing up and like the
attitude of how hard could it be?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yes, exactly, he was. It's like, what is it? What
twenty six thirty miles? I could do this? I'm like, yeah, shitty, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
It sounds like a nightmare. I would never run a
marathon in my life. I think you can put me
on the record and say I'll never run a marathon.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
I just kept thinking of the Beastie Boys song Intergalactic,
I'm a man ed rock saying from the Hudson River
out to the Nile, run the marathon to the very
last mile.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I was like, not me, brother, I couldn't run a
marathon in perfect conditions, let alone when it's conditions like this.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Oh yeah, these are so brutal. But folks are in
for a treat with this one, all right, why don't
we get into it.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Back to nineteen oh four, where thirty one runners are
trotting under the scorching sun. The race has just begun.
The athletes take a few laps around a cinder track
and then exit the stadium, heading out on to a
road course that loops through the Missouri countryside. They don't
(05:11):
get far before realizing this is going to be a problem.
Speaker 6 (05:17):
They didn't block off traffic.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
That's Susan brown Ow.
Speaker 6 (05:21):
I'm a professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri
Saint Louis.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Susan is an Olympics expert. In fact, back in the day,
she used to compete internationally in the heptathlon. Susan explains
that the nineteen oh four marathon course was a total mess.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
I think when you look at the nineteen oh four marathon,
there's some stuff that's pretty appalling.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
To start, the course was never closed to traffic. People
in their jalopies continued using the roads, forcing runners to
play a twenty five mile long game of Frogger. But frankly,
the risk of getting flattened was the least of anybody's worries.
(06:12):
The worst part was the dust.
Speaker 6 (06:17):
They mapped out a course that was essentially on dirt roads,
and it didn't occur to anybody that maybe driving your
old fashioned cars alongside the athletes might stir up even
more dust than would have been there otherwise.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
A thick layer of powdery dust coated the Saint Louis roads,
and with each passing car, a plume of dust rose
into the air.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
It's just one big dust cloud the whole way.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
It's hard to overstate just how bad this dust was.
Earlier that summer, there had been an automobile race on
these same streets. The dust clouds were so thick that
drivers couldn't see where they were going, leading to a
fatal crash. For some reason, Olympic organizers didn't learn any
(07:12):
lessons from that tragedy. Instead, they followed the same formula
and enlisted dozens of drivers to accompany the runners. The
cars carried scientists, trainers, and medical professionals, and they surrounded
the runners on all sides. One person in the caravan
(07:34):
was Charles Lucas.
Speaker 7 (07:36):
He would later write dust filled the air and more
or less carried into the stomach and lungs of the
athletes as they were compelled to run with their mouths open.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Just a half mile outside of the stadium, runners began
hacking out their lungs. Dust burned, their eyes, clogged their noses,
coated their throats. In the words of one observer quote,
the blinding, choking dust, combined with the august heat quote,
(08:08):
bakes the tongue and grips the wind like a vice.
Some runners had to run off the road to escape
the cloud and catch their breaths. One of the race's favorites,
John Lorden, who had previously won the Boston Marathon, barely
made it eight hundred yards before he had to pull
(08:29):
over to the side of Forsyth Road and spill his lunch.
The runners were just two miles in and it was
about to get worse, much worse.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
So in the midst of this ill conceived spectacle, you've
got supposedly this scientific experiment going on.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
The science experiment, Susan mentions, is the brainchild of John Sullivan.
Speaker 6 (08:59):
He controlled almost every aspect of sports, organizing the big events,
organizing the Olympic Games.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Sullivan was the most powerful man in American sports. In
charge of organizing the nineteen oh four Olympics, he wanted
to use the marathon race to test a theory he
called purposeful dehydration.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
The idea was that the marathon runners shouldn't drink along
the course.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, so Sullivan believed that athletes performed better without water. Now,
I want to remind you it's August thirtieth. It's more
than ninety degrees fahrenheit outside, it's humid. The marathon length
of twenty six point two miles hadn't been standardized yet,
(09:53):
but still this race was long. It's forty kilometers or
twenty four point eighty five miles. So what does Sullivan do.
He places one, just one water stop along the racecourse,
a well at the twelve mile mark. Right now, the
(10:17):
runners are just two miles into the race. They're dodging traffic,
hacking up their lungs, but they can barely see the
road they're running on, and the oppressive Missouri summer heat
is closing in on them from all sides. And now
they've got ten more miles before they can get a
(10:40):
sip of relief. This is a good spot to back
up and explain why the nineteen o four Olympic Marathon
was such a dumpster fire. To start, it's nineteen oh four.
This was the third Olympics ever, and it was the
first time America hosted. Back then, most people didn't know
(11:04):
or care much about the Olympics, so the Games were
packaged with something people did care about.
Speaker 6 (11:12):
The nineteen oh four Olympics took place within the context
of the World's Fair in Saint Louis.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
The World's Fair in nineteen oh four Saint Louis was
hosting a month's long festival in celebration of the Louisiana purchase.
And this was a much bigger deal than the Olympics.
Speaker 6 (11:34):
The World's Fair at that time had pageantry, you know,
way beyond anything, but Olympic Games had. The sports events
were sort of just a minor side show.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
The Olympics basically piggybacked on the Fair's popularity, and the
Fair used the Olympics as a launch pad for a
slew of weird experiments. Take for example, the fact that
the Fair hosted more than fourteen hundred indigenous people from
all over the world and put them on display. Walking
(12:07):
through the village, you could meet African pygmies, Patagonians, Japanese
anus Inuits. James Sullivan saw this and figured, hey, while
we got him here, let's do some experiments.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
Sullivan was a pretty committed racist. He wanted to prove that,
in fact, the civilized white man was physically superior to
the savage, so he concocted this idea of an event
that would actually test it.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
The idea was called Anthropology Days.
Speaker 6 (12:43):
They would have the natives who were on display at
the fair do sports and the performances, but would be
recorded and then those performances would be compared against those
in the Olympic Games to see who was physically superior.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Indigenous people did the one hundred yard dash, ran the mile,
and tried the broad jump. They even tossed around a baseball.
Speaker 6 (13:11):
Apparently it was the most popular event because many of
the natives had never seen a baseball before and they
just really wanted to give it a try.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
But overall, the natives didn't take the events seriously, namely
because they had no training or preparation or interest.
Speaker 6 (13:28):
You've got these natives who don't want to be there anyway.
They've never done the sport, they don't speak English very well,
and they don't understand what's expected of them.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
So most indigenous people just treated the whole thing as
a joke, which, by the way, upset James Sullivan a lot.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
The pygmies from Africa were full of mischief. They took
nothing seriously.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
However, we should point out there was one competition where
the indigenous people flourished, an event called pole climbing, where
athletes had to climb a fifty foot pole.
Speaker 6 (14:07):
Three of the competitors, who were from the Philippines, beat
the American record by as much as ten seconds.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Sullivan, who was also the editor in chief of the
Spauldings Sports Almanac and was in control of all record keeping,
never included that little statistic in the record book. The
point is James Sullivan was a schmuck. He had a
lot of, let's say, questionable ideas, and he used the
(14:36):
nineteen oh four Olympics as his personal laboratory. And the
runners in the marathon, they were his unwitting guinea pigs.
Of all of the men competing in the nineteen oh
four Olympic marathon, there was one athlete who may have
(14:58):
been best equipped to handle the heat, the traffic, and
even perhaps the lack of water.
Speaker 8 (15:06):
Was they leak Scarbahll of Cuba a real care.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
That's David Walachinski. He is one of the founding members
of the International Society of Olympic Historians Carba Hall.
Speaker 8 (15:20):
He he just got this idea that he was going
to go to the Olympics in Saint Louis and he
was going to run in the marathon.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
During the Cuban War of Independence, he was a courier
who delivered letters on the run and he had an
Olympic dream. So he visited the mayor of Havana, asking
the government to fund his trip to Saint Louis. The
local government refused, but carver Hall didn't give up. Instead,
(15:49):
he protested by running all day around the Mayor's palace.
A crowd gathered men smoking cigars sat around placing bets
on how long the crazy man would last. The mayor
looked outside to see who was causing the ruckus and
changed his mind. He gave carver Hall the money. The
(16:13):
Cuban took a boat to New Orleans and the temptations
of the Big Easy drew him in. Carver Hall decided
to do a little gambling, and during a game of craps,
he lost everything but the shirt off his back. Literally,
he had no other clothes, and now carver Hall was
(16:35):
stuck with no money left to travel the six hundred
ish miles to Saint Louis. He had no choice but
to walk the rest of the way.
Speaker 8 (16:46):
So he then hitchhiked to Saint Louis and carver Hall
arrived on the starting line with wearing boots, large shoes,
long pants.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
On the day of the race, everybody came wearing proper
running shorts and spiked shoes, but carver Hall a five
foot tall Cuban who weighed one hundred and twenty pound
pound soaking wet, arrived wearing a beret, a suit jacket,
clumsy two pound shoes, and long trousers.
Speaker 8 (17:16):
He just was inappropriate, and so they delayed the start
of the race while an American athlete got some scissors
and cut off Carbahall's pants so that he at least
had shorts.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Carbo Hall would keep the torn off pieces of his pants.
These were his only pair of pants and he wanted
to sew them back together after the race. Despite the
rough start, Carba Hall was physically speaking one of the
top competitors, but he was also too friendly for his
own good. As he ran the dusty streets outside Saint Louis,
(17:52):
he became captivated by the crowds assembled on the roadside, and.
Speaker 8 (17:57):
Carbo Hall he had a great time. He would stop
as he went around and talk to people.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
As the other runners ran by him. Carbon Hall was
happily practiced his broken English. It also didn't help that
carver Hall, who had spent the last week hitchhiking, hadn't
eaten anything over the previous two days, so when he
passed an orchard, he decided to take a detour. The
(18:23):
New York Evening World described what happened next.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Carvagel's stomach empty as a collapsed balloon was rubbing against
his spine over the fence, He climbed and stuffed himself
with fruit.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
A pack of thirteen runners past carbon Hall as he
spent a half hour jumping at tree limbs trying to
knock down green apples.
Speaker 8 (18:47):
I don't say that Carbo Hall really cared about winning.
He was somebody who enjoyed experience and he loved meeting people,
so whether he finished first, fourth, or twelfth didn't really
matter to him. He just wanted to have a good time,
which he did.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Carba Hall gorged himself on apples and eventually got back
to the race. Other competitors weren't so lucky. The heat
and dust started to get to people. At mile seven,
Franklin Pierce, the first Native American to compete for the
(19:24):
US in the Olympics, collapsed. Not long after, a runner
from New York felt his leg seize with cramps and
he dropped out. A mile or two down the road.
Another runner felt his stomach lurch and he consecrated the
road with his vomit. He dropped out too. Meanwhile, other
(19:47):
runners were getting sidetracked for other reasons. Take for instance,
Lentau and Jan Mashiani of South Africa.
Speaker 8 (19:56):
And they had come over not to compete in the Olympics,
but because they were part of the Boer War exhibit
at the World's Fair.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Lentau and Yamashiani were Swana tried tribesmen. They had never
run a marathon before, but they had worked as messengers
during the Boer War in Africa. Just a few years
earlier in Saint Louis, they were putting on battle re
enactments of the war and even took part in the
Anthropology Day's event.
Speaker 8 (20:25):
When they heard that there was going to be this
big running race, they figured, well, let's enter.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
The two men ran well, and frankly they probably could
have performed better, but.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
One of them was run off the course for a while,
chased by dogs.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Lenau was chased a mile off course because a dog
was nipping at his heels. Meanwhile, the purposeful dehydration experiment
was destroying the other runners. By mile nine, a runner
from Brooklyn had dropped out from nausea. The racers from
Greece began to drop faster than Icarus from the sky
(21:06):
and lures. The nineteen year old bricklayer from New York,
who was one of the race's favorites, was so overcome
with cramps that he had to call it quits and
get into a car. By the time the racers reached
the official water well at mile twelve, the crowd of
runners was already thin, and then they started to get
(21:30):
stomach aches. Here again is Charles Lucas, who witnessed the race.
Speaker 9 (21:36):
The visiting athletes were not accustomed to the water, and
as a consequence, many suffered from intestinal disorders.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
The local water, in other words, gave some athletes what
long distancers affectionately call runners trots. Among the afflicted was
the runner from Cuba, Carvea Hall. The apples he had
poached earlier were not sitting well, so he took a nap.
(22:09):
Carver Hall wasn't the only person who wanted a breather.
The brass worker Thomas Hicks, who was near the front
of the pack, was feeling the heat.
Speaker 8 (22:19):
And he started to you know, almost fate, and so
he had to lie down. This shows you how different
things are, you know, he had to lie down on
the road.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Hicks had a team of trainers in a car traveling
by his side. He desperately begged them for water, but
his trainers were big believers in the purposeful dehydration experiment too,
they refused, so Hicks got up and chugged on and
as other runners began dropping like flies, he was fighting
(22:52):
for the top spot. But at mile fifteen Hicks was
starting to flag again. He turned to his team for help.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
Thomas Hicks was begging for water by the end, and
didn't give him any water.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Instead, they gave him a sponge bath, and then they
reached for a little brown bottle with the word poison
stamped on it.
Speaker 8 (23:19):
His handlers then revived him by giving him repeated doses
of strict.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Nine strychnine sulfate to be exact, which you might know
as rat poison.
Speaker 8 (23:31):
Strychnine is very popular in murder mysteries because it was
often used to kill people, and you know, in small
doses it was a stimulant, but in large doses it
was a wonderful murder weapon still is.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
In small doses, strychnine sulfate can cause muscle spasms, which
in theory, can boost athletic performance without killing you. So
with the help of his trainers, Thomas Hicks began doping
in the middle of the race with Rodentici, which by
the way, was perfectly legal back then. Hicks continued on.
(24:14):
More racers dropped out, and then around mile nineteen, a
runner named William Garcia started coughing up blood. The heat,
the lack of water, and the dust had hit the
California runner hard. A horrific pain gripped his stomach as
(24:36):
he dropped to the road. Garcia's esophagus was coated with
dust and it had settled in his stomach, causing a hemorrhage.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
They had to be rushed to the emergency room. That
had ruptured his esophagus, and his life was saved only
by emergency surgeries.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Garcia would spend days in the hospital, clinging to life.
The field was getting thinner by the minute. Thomas Hicks
was now in the lead, with Albert Cory, a Frenchman,
a mile behind him, and then the Cuban woke from
his nap, apparently healed of food poisoning. He began running
(25:20):
with purpose. Here's the New York Evening World's account.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
He was eighteen sixteenth. He forged nearer the front, running
with dogged, unrelenting courage. A few miles from the finish,
he was coming fast. He was tenth, ninth, eighth, seven sixth.
The crowd began looking over its programs and whispering the
cuban's name.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Carver Hall was in good spirits. He ran past the
car carrying Charles Lucas and saw the men inside were
gorging themselves on peaches. Hey, can I have one of those?
The cuban asked, running beside the car. The men shook
their heads no. Carver Hall smiled and reached through the
open window, grabbing two peaches, and ran away, joyfully eating
(26:03):
the fruits as he ran. The finish was within five miles.
Thomas Hicks was still in the lead, but frankly, he
looked like a guy running on rap poison. Here's a
report from the Oshkosh Northwestern.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
He was no longer a runner. His muscles had ceased
to respond over a bell. He was a machine, and
a weak and tottering one, slowly and heavily. His numb
feet came down, His head rolled weakly on his shoulders.
The cramped muscles were drawn up in knots. His face
was lined by exhaustion. Into the semblance of an old
man and caked with dust.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
And then all of a sudden a new runner overtook him.
It wasn't Albert Cory, the Frenchman, and it wasn't the
Cuban Carver hal though he was gaining. It was a
runner named Fred Lores, the same guy who miles ago
had gotten into a car After sitting in the comfort
(27:04):
of an automobile for an hour. Laures had rejoined the
race and had taken the lead. Charles Lucas, who was
literally following the race in his car, saw Laures get
out and accosted him.
Speaker 9 (27:19):
Get off the road, laws.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
You're out of the race. How do you know him?
Out of the race?
Speaker 9 (27:23):
Why we saw you riding in a car?
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Is that so?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Laures claimed that the car had broken down and he
was just running back to the stadium.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I'm going to run in that's all.
Speaker 9 (27:36):
But you'll interfere with the runners.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
What do I care?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Soon, Lures, with fresh legs, pulled ahead of Lucas and
the front runner Hicks. Discouraged, Hicks turned to his trainers
and asked if he could just lay down and rest.
They refused. Instead, they handed him two raw egg whites
with another small dose of strychnine sulfate.
Speaker 6 (28:05):
But they also had in his case, we're going to
try to give him a little brandy if it got
too bad and brandy.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
According to Charles Lucas, the combination of raw eggs, rat
poison and booze did not appear to help Hicks.
Speaker 9 (28:23):
His eyes were dull, lustiless, the ashen collar of his
face and skin had deepened. His arms appeared as weight
well tied down. He could scarcely lift his legs, while
his knees were almost stiff.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
This put it mildly. Hicks was beginning to hallucinate. Visions
of food flashed before his eyes.
Speaker 6 (28:49):
And so at the end he was actually begging for
the brandy because he was so thirsty.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
At mile twenty one, hicks team obliged. They gave him
two more raw egg whites, another shot of brandy, another
pinch of strychnine sulfate, plus a steam ming spongebath heated
by the car's radiator. With that, Hicks seemed invigorated and
trudged on. Meanwhile, spectators at the stadium were going wild.
(29:20):
A runner had just entered the track.
Speaker 8 (29:22):
The first person into the stadium after three hours. If
you were somebody who knew American, you might have wondered
where arty. The first person was an American named Fred Lurtz,
and he looked very fresh.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Laws entered through the east gate and galloped to the
finish line to rock as applause.
Speaker 8 (29:42):
He was shaking the hands of Alice Roosevelt, the President's daughter,
when somebody pointed out that he had actually taken a
break from running and spent eleven miles in an automobile.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Confronted by his lie, Laws admitted that he had cheated
and claimed it was all just a practical joke. As
Booze rained down on Low Thomas Hicks was walking the
last of two large hills near the stadium. As he entered,
the crowd cheered. According to the Saint Louis Dispatch, the
(30:20):
runner didn't look too good.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
His feet dumped so regularly, so heavily, his frame shook
so joltingly. His lower jaw was hanging as an imbecility.
His eyes stared blankly.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Hicks trainers gave him more brandy and eggs as he
shuffled pathetically toward the home stretch. Over the last straightaway.
Two people had to help him walk over the finish line.
As he broke the tape, he fell into the people's arms.
Speaker 8 (30:53):
There's a wonderful photograph of Hicks, who looks completely out
of it from his strychnine and brandy.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Hicks's final time was three hours, twenty eight minutes and
fifty three seconds, which is easily the slowest winning time
in Olympic history. In fact, Hicks's pace was almost two
times slower than the pace run by the winner of
the last Olympic marathon, elud Kipchoge of Kenya. Regardless, Hicks
(31:28):
was the winner, and he did not care. The man
was in a complete daze rat poison and brandy. Notwithstanding,
he had also lost eight pounds. He was carted away
to see a doctor without even touching the trophy. Six
minutes later, the Frenchman Albert Corey would enter the stadium,
(31:50):
according to one observer, fresh as a daisy and full
of sprint. Then Arthur Newton of New York, shortly after
Carba Hall of Cuba entered the stadium. Blinded by dust
and sweat. He crossed the finish line and ran a
full extra lap before somebody told him he was allowed
to stop. Observers later noted that had carvea Hal not
(32:15):
gone on a side quest picking apples, talking to strangers
and napping, he would have finished a full hour earlier.
Of the thirty one racers who started the nineteen oh
four marathon, only fourteen finished. Lentau of South Africa finished ninth,
(32:37):
which was pretty good considering he was chased off course
by dogs. As for strychnine, it wasn't the last time
it'd be used during the Olympics.
Speaker 6 (32:47):
At the twenty sixteen Rio Olympics, there was a metal
winner in weightlifting who was actually disqualified after testing positive
for strychnin.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Fred Lews would receive a lifetime ban for cheating. The sentence, however,
was short lived. The following year, Lures was reinstated and
won the Boston Marathon, this time with his legs. Albert Corey,
the silver medalist from France, would go on to win
the Chicago Marathon in nineteen o eight. He trained for
(33:19):
the race by drinking wine. In fact, he made two
stops during his winning run for wine breaks. Thomas Hicks,
the gold medal winner, continued running marathons, winning the Chicago
race in nineteen o six. Later he became this is
true a clown. James Sullivan, despite organizing the most poorly
(33:44):
run marathon in Olympic history, continued to believe that drinking
water was bad for you, and Felix Carvehall would be
sent to compete in the nineteen o eight Olympic Games
in Athens, Greece. On the boat over, he disappeared and
was presumed dead. Months after his obituary was written. He
(34:07):
reappeared alive and well in Cuba and became a professional
marathon runner. He routinely came in last place, but was
always the crowd favorite.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
And that was a very special episode. Before we get
into our usual banter, I want to say it's been
a Newsy couple weeks here since our last episode. Zaren
got married. Congratulations, Thank you guys. Yes, I got the
jewelry and everything. Producer Josh got engaged here, congratulations. Yeah, Dana,
can we announce a book deal movie?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
What's going on in your corner?
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
You know, always a secret backlog of projects that I
probably can't announce, but just know I'm funny.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Busy, excellent, excellent, love it.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
Back to the marathon, Zaren, have your wheels been turning on?
The casting here I did.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
I did a little casting on this, so I tried
to keep it young for these are big athlete. So
for Fred Laws the bricklayer, the cheater guy, I thought
Finn Wolfhart, that brunette kid with the floppy hair from
Stranger Things. Oh yeah, you like that, okay. And after
Thomas Hicks the rat poison eater, I was thinking Glenn Powell,
(35:22):
that guy from Hitman and the Top Gun Maverick. Can't
you see him in that?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
He's charming and he wins. So he's like, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
You want him to win. That guy.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
You're like, all right at the end of the movie,
You're like, okay, this guy deserves it.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
You're like, he's taking rat poison. Let's give it to
him right exactly.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
And he could do that with a smile. Now.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Felix Carvehaal the beret clad Apple Gorgean peacheat and Cuban yep.
I was thinking I couldn't find somebody young for him,
so I thought a cgi d aged Gail Garcia Bernal.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Oh, he would be so good, right.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
The spirit is there.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
You just get like scorse Ace and thelm Machina Macker
on it boom done. And finally for James Sullivan, the
scientific racist. I apologize for casting you this way, brother,
But Austin Butler, the guy who played Elvis and the
Pilot in a World War two series that on Apple
was Masters of Air.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
That cat, I think he can nail it. That's great, right,
does that work?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Who's your very special character of this episode?
Speaker 4 (36:17):
I mean, I think it has to be Felix Carvehall.
I mean, my man shows up in a beret, two
pound boots, suit, jacket, I'm guessing wool trousers. I love
this guy. He's like, yeah, I get cut them off
and he keeps the pant legs. I mean, come on,
I love that guy.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
What about y'all.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
There's a photo of him at the at the marathon
just it looks like he's in normal clothes and a
little hat. It's sort of the sweetest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
I love this guy. I've sentily heard about him.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
It reminds me of that viral tweet that goes around
every Olympics about like every event should have one normal
person pulled off the streets and made to compete just
so you see how amazing it is what everyone else
is doing well.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
That was basically what James Sullivan wanted to do, right,
but he did it with indigenous people part of his
scientific racism. Now, if you set aside the scientific racism
of anthropology days and the human zoos and all that,
the world's fair. This story is hilarious. Now you have
to set James Sullivan aside. But with him aside, I
love this story.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, minus the racism and the human guinea pigs. Yeah,
it's a really really sweet story of human endurance.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
But the running twelve miles without water while gobbling rat poison?
How did they think this was gonna go?
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Just trust me on it, Trust me on this theory.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Here, I had an old ass, a high schooled football trainer,
Doc Woods. Right, this guy I by dislocated my jawn
a game. He just with one good whack of his fist,
he reset my jaw like on the sideline.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
I'm like, yeah, perfect. That was the spirit of the
medicine of this time.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Oh my god, I can't believe that happened.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Oh yeah, totally still clicks.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
But whatever, I will say, this episode just reinforces my
commitment to never running America. I think that's very clear.
It's something that I just will never do, and that's
that's fine. I think I'm gonna live a life very
happy without ever having to deal with that.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Yeah, you can just eat the peaches, eat the apples,
do the farm to table part that Felix does, and
then you're good.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I just I'll eat peaches. I'll go to the farmer's market.
There's easier ways to get peaches.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Exactly my late breaking very special character nominee. I'm gonna
go with Zaron's friend Dave Kim, Was it Dave Kimoom?
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, hell yeah it is.
Speaker 5 (38:28):
I think he brings the spirit of this into the
modern day. I love it.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
It's very sweet.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
What about you, Dana?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I mean, should we go with the rats who aren't poisoned?
Speaker 1 (38:38):
The rats?
Speaker 2 (38:40):
The rats in Saint Louis who are like, oh, real
shortage of poison. Recently we've been doing pretty well.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Shout out to the rats of Saint Louis.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Shout out to the rats getting a reprieve.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
I'll say one more thing before we wrap here. We
have a show email Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com.
People have been writing in with just their short ideas
for episodes, and we haven't fact.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Checked any of them yet.
Speaker 5 (39:05):
But some great stuff here that I really hope is true.
And if we get a handful and they make it
through fact Checker Austin's gauntlet, then maybe we'll do a
mailbag episode later. So Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com.
Do you have an amazing story, perhaps we'll read it,
or you'll fool us and we'll look bad.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I think if it gets through the fact checker and
they fool us, they should get it. Anyway, that's good
for them. They wrote a convincing yarn.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
We'd still love to just read it.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and
me Jason English. Today's episode was written by Lucas Riley.
Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by
Emily Maronoff, Mixing and mastering by Beheid Fraser. Our story
(40:01):
editor is Marisa Brown. Original music by Alis McCoy. Research
in fact by Austin Thompson and Lucas Riley. Show logo
by Lucy Quintonia. Special thanks to Carl Catle and Josh
Fisher for their metalworthy voice acting.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
I'm your executive producer.
Speaker 5 (40:19):
If you'd like to email the show for any reason,
we can be reached at very Special Episodes at gmail
dot com. Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Jason English
Dana Schwartz
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