The most ridiculous Olympic race ever

The 1904 Summer Olympics marathon was not a race so much as a descent into chaos, a 24-mile-1500-yard parade of human endurance, poor judgment, and outright farce, a distance that would not be standardized to the now-familiar 26 miles 385 yards until the 1908 London Games. It took place in St. Louis, Missouri, under conditions that modern standards would deem unconscionable, dusty roads, sweltering heat, and a route that seemed designed to test sheer will to survive rather than athleticism. The winning time was over three hours, 3:28:53, to be exact, making it a full 29 minutes slower than the second-slowest Olympic marathon up to that point. It stood as proof less of speed than of the sheer determination required to finish at all. What unfolded was less a sporting event than a series of loosely connected disasters, each more improbable than the last, stitched together by desperation, delirium, and the peculiar logic of an era that believed suffering was character-building and hydration was for the weak.

Frederick Lorz, an American runner from New York, was the first to cross the finish line, arms raised in triumph, only to be immediately disqualified. He had not run the entire distance. After dropping out at the nine-mile mark, overcome by cramps and exhaustion, he climbed into a car and rode for several miles, waving cheerfully at fellow runners and spectators alike as if on a victory lap. When the vehicle broke down at mile 19, he stepped out and resumed jogging, continuing all the way to the finish in a performance so convincing that he was greeted as the champion. For a brief, glorious moment, he was celebrated as the winner. He even had his photograph taken with Alice Roosevelt, the vivacious daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, who placed a laurel wreath upon his head and prepared to award him the gold medal. Then the truth emerged. Lorz claimed it was a joke, a prank gone too far, but the officials were not amused. The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), which oversaw the Games with a mix of paternalism and punitive zeal, banned him for life, though that sentence was quietly commuted to six months the following year after Lorz issued a formal apology and it was determined he hadn’t intended to defraud. He later redeemed himself by legitimately winning the 1905 Boston Marathon. In 1904, however, his performance was a fraud, a sprint to infamy that foreshadowed the blurry line between showmanship and sport that would haunt athletics for decades.

The man who actually won, Thomas Hicks, was in no better condition. Born in Bromley, Kent, in 1875, Hicks had emigrated to the United States and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he trained under the watchful eye of his coach, Dr. Charles Lucas. A meticulous man with a physician’s faith in chemistry, Lucas believed in the power of science to conquer nature, and on that scorching August afternoon, he put that belief to a harrowing test. Hicks completed the race in a state of near-collapse, supported by his trainers as he staggered across the line. He did not run the final miles so much as survive them, sustained by a cocktail of substances that would today be classified as doping. His handlers administered brandy, raw eggs, and strychnine sulfate, yes, strychnine, throughout the race, believing it would keep him alert and energized. Strychnine, in minute doses, was then considered a stimulant, though it is more widely known as a poison. The dose was calibrated, they thought, to invigorate without killing. It nearly failed. By the final stretch, Hicks was hallucinating, his body convulsing, his mind adrift. He had to be physically propped up and carried across the finish line, his feet shuffling in a grotesque imitation of running. After finishing, he was carried off on a stretcher and treated by four doctors who worked in shifts to stabilize him. He lost eight pounds during the race, mostly water and muscle, and might have died had he not received prompt medical attention. The gold medal, in this case, came perilously close to being a posthumous honor.

Another runner, Andarín Carvajal, often remembered as Felix Carvajal, was a Cuban postman and amateur athlete whose journey to the starting line was as improbable as his performance. He arrived at the Games on a whim, having lost most of his money gambling on the ship ride up from Havana to New Orleans. Broke and stranded, he hitchhiked the rest of the way to St. Louis, arriving at the last minute with no official entry, no proper running gear, and no food. He showed up in street clothes, still wearing the long-sleeved shirt and trousers he had packed for the journey. And not just any clothes, they were the stiff, dark garments of a postal worker on duty, already worn from days of travel and ill-suited to the sweltering Missouri heat. Carvajal, whose real name was Andarín Carvajal but was often misrecorded in American press accounts as Felix, had once been a notary in Havana before a gambling scandal cost him his position and set him on an itinerant path. Running was never his profession, but he had developed a reputation in Cuba for his uncanny endurance, often covering long distances on foot during his postal rounds. He arrived in New Orleans with a few coins and a dream, only to lose everything at the card table aboard the steamship. Broke and stranded, he hitchhiked the remaining hundreds of miles to St. Louis, surviving on scraps and the occasional kindness of strangers. By the time he reached the Olympic grounds, he had not eaten in over 40 hours. Officials, bewildered by his appearance and lack of credentials, nearly turned him away, until he demonstrated such earnest determination that they allowed him to join the field, a decision made on the fly, much like so many others that day. His makeshift shorts, crudely fashioned from his trousers with whatever string he could scavenge, flapped awkwardly as he ran, drawing chuckles from spectators who mistook him for a clown rather than a competitor. But Carvajal didn’t care. He had come too far to be humiliated by fabric. With no time to change, he tore the legs of his pants with his hands and tied them up with string to make them more suitable for running. Along the way, he stopped to eat apples from an orchard. They were rotten. The result was severe gastrointestinal distress. 

And then there were the peaches. Before the race even began, parched and light-headed, he saw a spectator casually eating two ripe peaches. Desperate, he asked if he could have one. The man refused. Without hesitation, Carvajal snatched both and sprinted off, disappearing into the crowd like a fugitive. He devoured them quickly, the juice running down his chin, the first real nourishment he’d had in a day and a half. It was a small act of survival, but one that foreshadowed the improvisational nature of his entire run. Once on the course, he moved with a kind of dreamlike focus, unaware of splits or pacing, driven only by the instinct to keep moving forward. The orchard where he stopped for apples wasn’t on the official route, it was a detour he made on impulse, lured by the sight of low-hanging fruit. He didn’t know they were spoiled until it was too late. Within minutes, cramps seized his abdomen, twisting his body into knots. He collapsed beside the road, writhing, then lay still, surrendering to exhaustion. For nearly half an hour, he slept, deep, untroubled sleep, as if the earth itself had cradled him. When he awoke, dazed but strangely refreshed, he simply stood up and resumed running, as though the entire ordeal had been a brief intermission. No one expected him to finish. No one could have imagined that a man in street clothes, fed by theft and rotten fruit, would cross the line in fourth place, ahead of seasoned marathoners who had trained for years under ideal conditions. His time was never recorded, lost to the haphazard bookkeeping of the day. Yet his presence endured in memory, a folk hero shaped by stubborn, almost absurd perseverance rather than by triumph. He slowed, then stopped entirely, lying down on the side of the road for a nap, perhaps the most famous siesta in Olympic history. When he woke, disoriented but determined, he got up and kept going. Despite the nap, the bad fruit, and the street clothes, he finished fourth, a feat of raw tenacity that earned him the quiet admiration of those who understood that finishing, under such conditions, was its own kind of victory.

Then there was Len Taunyane, often recorded as Len Tau, a South African runner of Tswana heritage, one of the first two Black Africans to appear in the modern Olympic Games. He was not officially entered as an athlete. He and his compatriot Jan Mashiani had been brought to St. Louis as part of an anthropological exhibit tied to the 1904 World’s Fair, displayed alongside other cultural curiosities from the colonies, their lives reduced to ethnographic spectacle. At some point, someone, perhaps an official, perhaps a curious onlooker, decided to let them run the marathon. Len Taunyane did, but his race was derailed when a pack of aggressive dogs chased him nearly a mile off course, forcing him to sprint through a farmer’s field to escape. He managed to rejoin the route and still finished ninth. Mashiani, running in actual shoes despite some accounts claiming otherwise, came in twelfth. The fact that they completed the race at all, under those conditions, was remarkable. The fact that they were there as part of a human exhibit made it tragic, a stark reminder that the Olympics, for all their ideals, were still entangled with the prejudices and power structures of the age.

The course itself was a hazard, a winding path of unpaved country roads kicked up with dust, making breathing difficult and visibility poor. The race began with five laps around the inside of Francis Field, a 1⅔-mile preamble on cinder track before spilling out into the open countryside. From there, runners navigated a loop that passed through Creve Coeur, a rural area where recent rains had washed out key roads, forcing last-minute rerouting. There were no aid stations in the modern sense, no water stops, no medical support along the route. The only sources of hydration were a single water tower at the six-mile mark and a well near the halfway point. Organizers, led by James Edward Sullivan, a man of rigid ideology and questionable judgment, believed that drinking during a race was unhealthy, even dangerous, a widely held notion at the time. His ostensible reason for withholding water was to conduct research on “purposeful dehydration,” a theory so bizarre it sounds like satire. The idea was simply to run from point A to point B, and whoever made it was the winner. The result was predictable: of the 32 runners from seven nations, representing the United States, France, Cuba, Greece, the Orange River Colony, Great Britain, and Canada, only 14 finished. The rest succumbed to heat exhaustion, dehydration, or physical breakdown.

Some competitors barely resembled athletes. One man, Albert Corey, was listed as American but was actually a French immigrant employed by the Chicago Police Department. He ran the marathon as part of his duties, though his nationality remains a point of confusion, officially listed as representing France in the marathon, he competed in a mixed team in the four-mile relay, a contradiction that went largely unremarked at the time. Another, Arthur Newton, a wiry and determined runner from Connecticut, finished third despite the conditions. He had trained rigorously, studying the Boston Marathon winners before him, and unlike Hicks, he refused stimulants, relying instead on sheer endurance. His achievement was overshadowed by the spectacle around him, but among those who knew the sport, it was recognized as one of the few genuinely clean performances in a race steeped in artifice.

Meanwhile, the race’s only other international sensation, Albert Corey, was navigating a different kind of identity crisis. Though listed as representing France in the marathon, Corey was a French immigrant living and working in Chicago, employed by the city’s police department. His participation blurred the lines between national representation and personal ambition in an era when Olympic eligibility rules were still vague and inconsistently enforced. He ran the marathon as part of a broader Olympic campaign, he would later compete in the four-mile team race as part of a mixed team, officially designated as “Mixed Team” in the records, though all his teammates were American. This dual status, French in one event, de facto American in another, highlighted the chaotic administrative framework of the 1904 Games, where the AAU, not the International Olympic Committee, held ultimate authority, and decisions were often made on the spot. Corey finished second, more than six minutes behind Hicks, but his medal was accepted without controversy, a quiet acknowledgment that in St. Louis, legitimacy was often a matter of who crossed the line and who was still breathing. His story, like so many others that day, was one of adaptation, of men making do with flawed rules, poor planning, and impossible conditions. There were no perfect athletes in 1904, only survivors. And in a race where one winner was a cheat, another nearly dead, and a third napping in a ditch, second place might have been the most honest achievement of all.

The field included several past champions, including John Lordon, the 1903 Boston Marathon winner, who dropped out after 10 miles, violently ill; and Sammy Mellor, the 1902 Boston victor, who led at the halfway point but became disoriented and collapsed near mile 14.5. Michael Spring, the 1904 Boston champion, also failed to finish. The lack of preparation for such conditions was staggering. The race was run in late afternoon, starting at 3:00 p.m., when temperatures were still high, around 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), while modern marathons typically begin at dawn to avoid the worst heat. The roads were not just dusty, they were treacherous, carved with ruts and patches of loose gravel that twisted ankles and broke rhythm. Runners had no shoes designed for such terrain; most wore stiff leather shoes more suited to walking than racing, offering little grip and even less cushioning. The heat shimmered off the ground in visible waves, distorting the horizon and playing tricks on exhausted minds. Some competitors reported seeing phantom aid stations that vanished as they approached, mirages born of dehydration and fatigue. One runner, Michael Ryan, claimed he saw a cow standing in the middle of the course, though no one else recalled such an animal, either it was there, or his vision had begun to fail.

The lack of water was catastrophic. By mile twenty, many were reduced to walking, tongues swollen, lips cracked, their bodies shutting down piece by piece. One man, William Garcia of the United States, collapsed from internal injuries caused by inhaling fine dust that coated his digestive tract, a condition exacerbated by the race officials’ cars, which roared ahead and behind the runners, kicking up clouds of choking powder. He was found unconscious and nearly died. Another, Charles Lopez, though his name is lost to the official record, drank from a contaminated water source and suffered severe cramps. Spectators lined parts of the route, offering no assistance. Some even hurled fruit at the runners, their intent mocking rather than helpful. A banana peel here, an orange rind there, obstacles scattered like traps. The course passed near open sewers in one stretch, filling the air with a stench so thick it made breathing harder than the running. Dust, heat, poison, exhaustion, hallucinations, sabotage by spectators, and foul air, every element conspired to make the race less a contest of athleticism than a gauntlet of attrition. And still, they pressed forward, driven not by the hope of victory but by the refusal to accept the shame of quitting a race that had long since ceased to make sense.

Runners were not given maps or clear directions. Some went off course, either by mistake or because the route was poorly marked. The organizers had not anticipated the need for course marshals or signage. The entire event operated on a kind of improvisational logic, let the men run, and see who makes it. There were no rules against riding in a car, no bans on strychnine, no provisions for medical emergencies. The only requirement was to finish. Everything else was negotiable.

And finish they did, in ones and twos, staggering, crawling, collapsing. The man who came in second, Albert Corey, did so under questionable circumstances, officially representing France, though his connection to the nation was tenuous, having lived in the U.S. for years. The third-place finisher, Arthur Newton, was an experienced runner who somehow survived the conditions without resorting to poison or naps. But his achievement was overshadowed by the spectacle around him. The 1904 Olympic marathon is remembered for its absurdity far more than for its champions.

It had everything: a man in a car, a man on strychnine, a postman with a stomachache, a runner chased by dogs, a near-fatal dust inhalation, and a finish line that felt less like triumph and more like survival. No one was disqualified for doping because doping, as a concept, did not yet exist in the rulebooks. No one was penalized for receiving outside assistance because the rules didn’t account for it. The race unfolded in a legal and ethical gray zone, where determination outweighed fairness, and finishing was its own reward.

One runner, James Clark, dropped out after five miles. Another, John Svanberg, finished but was so disoriented he could not remember the race. The clock did not matter. The records were incomplete. The conditions were brutal. And yet, the event was considered a success, at least by the standards of the time. It was part of the Olympic Games, after all, and therefore legitimate, no matter how many people hallucinated, collapsed, or cheated.

The 1904 Olympic marathon was not a test of speed. It was a test of suffering. It rewarded endurance over speed, favoring the most stubborn, the most delusional, and those most willing to suffer. It was a race where brandy was medicine, strychnine was fuel, apples were sabotage, and dogs were legitimate course hazards. It was a race where a man could nap, get lost, eat poison fruit, and still finish fourth. It was a race where the winner needed immediate medical attention and the first-place finisher hadn’t even run the whole way.

It was, in every sense, a disaster. And it was, in its own bizarre way, perfect.