The first marathon, as we now know it

The search for extra Irish Olympic medals

In an earlier blog, I referred to Ireland’s quite respectable Olympic medal count of 31 and how this number could also be enhanced further if we were to consider the many medals won by Irish athletes representing other countries in the early years of the Olympics, primarily Britain, along with those three medals won in the Olympic art competitions of 1924 and 1948 https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/olympian-warfare-art-and-tipperary.html

And then Richard Askwith’s recent article reminded me that the Olympic spirit is about so much more than medal counts, as exemplified at the first post war Olympics in London in 1948 when, in the words of Emil Zátopek, the revival of the Olympics amidst the ruins of six years of war ‘was as if the sun had come out’ https://unherd.com/2020/04/how-the-olympics-could-rekindle-their-flame/

Some early Tipperary Olympians

But after all that, it has to be said that another few medals for Ireland would be nice. And that got me thinking of that wonderful bronze statue in front of the courthouse in Nenagh commemorating Olympians with Tipperary connections. There’s Bob Tisdall with his 400m hurdle gold medal at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, rightly credited to Ireland in the record books. But then there’s Matt McGrath (born in 1875 in my own parish of Ballina/Boher and just a few miles from Nenagh) who over the course of three Olympics (London 1908, Stockholm 1912 and Paris 1924) amassed three medals in the hammer throw, two silvers and one gold. However, he won the medals representing his adoptive country of the United States, so Ireland misses out there.

The life-sized bronze statues in Nenagh of (left to right) 

Matt McGrath, Johnny Hayes and Bob Tisdall

And the third athlete commemorated in Nenagh is Johnny Hayes, whose father Michael was a baker in Silver Street in the town before emigrating to the United States. Johnny was born and reared in the United States, so we have only a tenuous claim on his Olympic marathon gold won in the 1908 London Olympics. But although we can’t claim the medal for Ireland, the key role of this Irish American in perhaps the most eventful and important of all Olympic marathons should make us proud.  

Johnny Hayes (1886-1965)

Some Ancient Greeks and two Frenchmen

The distance of 26 miles and 385 yards (or 42.2 km in new money) is a distance that most runners can tell you off the top of their head as being the official distance for a marathon. Prior to the 1908 Olympics, marathon-like races were generally set at in or around 25 miles and, despite the neat creation myth that modern Olympic marathons are based on a mystical revival of certain military events in the history of Ancient Greece, the 19^th century had already seen a steadily increasing interest in long distance walking and running races without any great heed being paid to the Ancient Greeks.

One of the most well established stories behind the Ancient Greek origins of the race is based on Pheidippides, who was a hemerodromus (professional long distance running courier) and ran 25 miles from the battlefield near Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over the invading Persians. Legend has it that his last words (before dropping dead) were ‘Chairete, Nikomen’ ('Joy to you, we’ve won'). Incidentally, it may be that the 25 mile trip was merely the straw that broke the back of this unfortunate hemerodromus, as he had allegedly covered 150 miles over the previous two days in seeking military help from the Spartans in the fight against the Persians, that particular run giving rise to the modern annual Spartathlon ultra-running race https://www.spartathlon.gr/en

Pheidippides announcing the Greek victory over the Persians at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC

Painting by Luc-Oliver Merson, 1869

Ultimately, the adoption of the Ancient Greek creation myth for the modern Olympic marathon race may have been due to Baron de Coubertin being nudged into the idea of a ‘marathon’ race at the first modern Olympics in 1896 by his friend and fellow Frenchman Michael Bréal, after Bréal had read and become inspired by Robert Browning’s 1879 poem about Pheidippides, ending with the melodramatic lines:

Till in he broke: ‘Rejoice, we conquer!’, Like wine thro’ clay,

Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died – the bliss!

The 1908 London Olympic marathon

The Polytechnic Harriers athletics club designed the course for the marathon at the 1908 London Olympics with the requirements that the race have a royal book-ending, so to speak. In order to gain the approval of the royal family, the race started underneath the East Terrace of Windsor Castle so that the royal children could enjoy the spectacle. The race was to end at the now long gone White City Stadium and, in another effort to gain royal approval, the runners were required to complete a full circuit of the track inside the stadium before finishing beneath the royal box, thus bringing the distance to ‘around 26 miles and 385 yards’. Despite the completely arbitrary setting of this distance (unless you have strong royalist tendencies), the distance has become the standard for marathons and was formally codified as such by the International Amateur Athletic Federation in 1921.

The course for the 1908 Olympic marathon, with royal 'bookends' 

at Windsor and White City Stadium

The Americans before the start of the race, with Johnny Hayes 
second from left wearing number 26

The race itself would turn into a war of attrition between the main competitors from the fifty five starters, but two of the athletes would ultimately make all the headlines. In what turned out to be a hot day and a grueling race, after nearly three hours of running the Italian confectioner Dorando Pietri was the first to enter the White City Stadium, looking to be a clear winner. But those extra few royal yards added on to the end of the race were to be his downfall, quite literally. First taking a wrong turn on entering the stadium and then falling five times before finally breaking the finishing tape, we can only hope that the nightmarish experience for Pietri was numbed by his obvious confusion and delirium. Possibly adding to the immense pressure he felt, and Pietri may not even have been aware of it, a brass band started playing ‘The Conquering Hero’ as Johnny Hayes entered the stadium in second place.

A very famous photo: after a wrong turn and five falls in the stadium, 

Dorando Pietri crosses the finish line to claim gold, or so it seems

But it was only after falling over the finish line in a near Pheidippidean collapse that Pietri's nightmare really began. Because as soon as that Irish American son of a Nenagh baker, Johnny Hayes, crossed the line in second, the Americans began their objections to Pietri’s finish. They rightly claimed that he had been helped in the last part of the race by numerous interventions from the stewards and assorted onlookers. The appeals of the Americans were successful and Pietri was disqualified. Therefore, Johnny Hayes became the first winner of the current Olympic marathon distance and, simultaneously, the first world and Olympic record holder for the specific distance. 

A much less famous photo: Johnny Hayes about to finish second, or so it seems

Interestingly, Johnny Hayes' time of 2 hours 55 minutes and 18 seconds would be regarded as only an average time for a top club runner today, such is the progress that has been made in training, nutrition and running shoes since 1908. In fact, just yesterday I noted on Strava that a friend of mine completed a marathon in training on his own in a time of 2 hours 52 minutes, this with the additional challenge of keeping his route within the COVID-19 restricted two kilometres of his home.

And in stark contrast to the fastidious preparation of modern athletes of all levels, the two main heroes of 1908 had bizarrely unconventional approaches to race nutrition and hydration. Pietri wore a handkerchief on his head that he had doused in balsamic vinegar, which he would occasionally put in his mouth for refreshment. He also repeated the mantra to himself ‘vincero o moriro’ (meaning 'win or die', both of which he nearly achieved). Johnny Hayes reported having had ‘a little beef and toast and a cup of tea’ before the race but he did not eat or drink atall during the race: ‘I merely sponged my face and gargled my throat with a little brandy’. 

To compensate Pietri for his disappointment (and maybe as a manifestation of royal guilt for those extra near deadly yards added to the end of the race), he was awarded a silver cup by Queen Alexandra. The photograph of Dorando Pietri crossing that finish line in 1908 is one for the ages and, in yet another strange twist, an eyewitness account was provided by a very famous journalist and author with Irish genes. Because one of Pietri's falls occurred right in front of a certain Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote afterwards: ‘I caught a glimpse of the haggard, yellow face, the glazed expressionless eyes. Surely he is done now?’ 

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930): an eyewitness reporting journalist 

at the London 1908 Olympic marathon

The Italian would go on to become something of a celebrity, buoyed up by the Ancient Greek levels of heroic tragedy of his marathon. In contrast to his Italian rival, Johnny Hayes led a quieter and, perhaps because of two specific physical limitations, a luckier life. He had had a tough beginning, born into extreme poverty, with his parents dying within weeks of each other and his younger siblings being taken into orphanages. He went on to work as a ‘sandhog’, tunneling for the New York subway. He then joined the Irish American Athletic Club (IAAC), maybe to get some respite from the demands of his gruelling labouring job. Members of the athletics club were often found jobs by the IAAC, typically with the New York Police Department. However, standing at only 5 feet 4 inches, Johnny Hayes was too short to become a policeman and so, because of this first physical limitation, he got the altogether safer and more pleasant job of working in Bloomingdales. And he turned that building itself into a training camp, running circuits on the rooftop cinder track at night in preparation for the Olympics.

His second physical limitation proved to be even luckier when, just a few years after the Olympics, because of colour blindness, he was denied entry to the US Army at the dawn of the First World War.