The 1904 Olympic Men’s Marathon Was Cinematically Chaotic
When you watch the Olympics today, the mind-boggling amount of money poured into the ceremonies is obvious. Like, just getting Lady Gaga to go Moulin Rouge was dozens of people’s full-time jobs. But the modern Olympic games go back hundreds of years, when that amount of money didn’t even exist, and they were just kind of thrown together by “running in fields” enthusiasts. Because before superconglomerate-sponsored arenas, that’s pretty much where they took place: a random field somewhere. That’s part of what allowed the 1904 Olympic men’s marathon to become such a clusterfuck.
You see, the art of marathon course design hadn’t yet become a science, so the 1904 marathon was mapped out over mostly rural Missouri roads covered in thick layers of dust. Have you ever driven behind a horse-and-buggy on a dusty country road and angrily questioned aloud whether this was still the Pre-Industrial Age? Now imagine there was no windshield protecting your breathing pipes, and you have some idea what these runners were working with.
Oh, also, the organizers were testing a theory that dehydration boosts athletic performance somehow, so there were only two water stops along the nearly 25-mile course. They couldn’t have sabotaged the participants more if they’d loosed packs of wild hounds upon them, which isn’t far from what transpired.
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Indeed, about half the runners dipped before they reached the finish line, at least one of them because he’d collapsed and nearly bled to death after the dust ripped through his digestive tract. There was a lot of collapsing, including by the man initially declared the winner, Frederick Lorz. He actually only made it nine miles before deciding to hitch a ride through the rest of the course, but when the car broke down just before the finish line, he thought it would be funny to run the rest of the way. At least, that’s what he claimed when he was caught right before the president’s daughter awarded him the gold. He was subsequently banned for life because the Olympics isn’t the time for pranks.
The actual winner, Thomas Hicks, had a much more harrowing journey. To combat the effects of the dust and dehydration, his trainers kept him doped up on a steady supply of brandy and strychnine. Yep, that’s rat poison. It was effective in terms of keeping him on his feet, but it also gave him hallucinations to the point that he literally didn’t know where he was. Eventually, it didn’t even do that, and his trainers had to carry him across the finish line. The whole thing was such a mess that that counted as a win, although the Olympics frowns upon doping and carrying today.
Pretty much everyone else who finished the race had an equally colorful story. Andarín Carvajal showed up in street clothes after a lost weekend in New Orleans, stole food from spectators, then passed out after eating some rotten apples off the ground, and still finished fourth place. Len Taunyane was chased off-course by wild freaking dogs, and even he managed to come in ninth.
When you think about it, this is a better demonstration of the Olympic spirit than a thousand Snoops Dogg carrying torches. Maybe they should release the hounds at all of the Olympic Games in the future. It would certainly be more interesting.
