by #LizPublika
America’s first Olympic event could have won a gold medal for its sheer absurdity.
The 1904 Olympic Games were held in St. Louis, Missouri, and were tied to and overshadowed by the World’s Fair, which took place the same year to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. From poorly planned events to blatant cheating by the participants, it was an Olympic event for the history books in every possible way.
The absurdity kicked off with the marathon, which was implemented to honor the classical heritage of Greece, where the Olympics first began. From the start, however, the event was a bizarre spectacle that seemed more appropriate for a typical fair carnival than the prestigious Olympic Games. So much so, that after the fact, officials debated abolishing it for good.
Here’s what happened:
On August 30th, a particularly hot and humid day, David R. Francis — then the president of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition — first fired the starting pistol at precisely 3:03 p.m., which kicked off the 24.85-mile long marathon race on a dusty road. At the time, the race was considered to be “the most difficult a human being was ever asked to run over.”
The course involved seven hills, varying from 100 to 300 feet high, some of which had brutally long and difficult ascents. To make things worse, cracked stone was reportedly strewn across the roadway filled with crosstown traffic, delivery wagons, railroad trains, trolley cars, and people walking their dogs — all of which made this seem closer to Frogger than an elite competition.
Plus, cars carrying coaches and physicians drove alongside the runners, kicking up tons of dust that resulted in serious coughing spells for the athletes. William Garcia became the first Olympic medical emergency when he collapsed on the side of the road, eight miles from the finish line, due to dust coating his esophagus and ripping his stomach lining, causing serious hemorrhaging.
On top of that, there was only one spot for fresh water available to the athletes, some 12 miles from the start of the race, thanks to James Sullivan, the chief organizer of the games, who wanted to test the limits and effects of dehydration. It’s unclear why he decided to engage in this experiment at the most significant competitive event in the world, but he did.
But Garcia was not the only athlete to experience trouble. John Lorden had bouts of severe vomiting that led him to drop out. Sam Mellor experienced serious cramps, which led him to eventually leaving the race. Interestingly enough, though, these were not amateur runners, but established athletes with a verifiable history of accomplishment.
The marathon event also gave us the first historically documented incident of performance enhancing drug use. Roughly seven miles from the finish line, Thomas Hicks' coaches and handlers fed him a concoction of strychnine and egg whites, since the games had no rules about performance enhancing drugs at the time.
But drugs were not the only cheating that went on during the Olympics. The majority of assembled athletes were mainly middle-distance runners and people who ran, at some point. One such athlete was Fred Lorz, an American who trained at night and worked as a bricklayer by day. He placed in a special five-mile race sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Union to qualify for the Olympics.
According to different sources, Lorz also experienced severe cramps. So, at the nine-mile mark, he decided to hitch a ride in one of the accompanying automobiles, giddily waving at spectators and fellow runners as he passed. He got out of the car roughly three miles before the finish line and “made it” across to roaring cheers, before his deception was discovered.
The hodgepodge of contestants included some interesting participants, like the two competitors from the Tswana tribe of South Africa, who became the first Black Africans to take part in the modern Olympics. In town as part of the South African World’s Fair exhibit, they allegedly ran barefoot, even though photos show that at least one was wearing shoes. One of the two gentlemen was chased off the course by wild dog.
And then there was Félix Carvajal. The Cuban national and former mailman who raised money to come to the United States by demonstrating his running prowess throughout Cuba. But, upon his arrival to New Orleans, he was rumored to have lost all of his money in a dice game, resulting in him having to walk and hitchhike to St. Louis. Let’s call that a warm up.
On race day, Carvajal opted to jog in a cumbersome pair of shoes, a billowing shirt, and cut-off pants, making good time even though he paused to chat with spectators in broken English. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s car “passed the little Cuban three miles out, still running at an even gait, and he waved his cap and yelled enthusiastically,” as the paper reported the following day.
According to reports, Carvajal spotted a car whose occupants were eating peaches, and asked to bum one. When the strangers refused, he playfully snatched two and ate them as he ran. A bit further along the course, he stopped at an orchard and snacked on some apples, which turned out to be rotten. Suffering from stomach cramps, he laid down and even took a nap.
But there were moments of surprising and genuine triumph, where athletes like George Eyser — a gymnast and amputee with a wooden leg — earned six medals, three of which were gold. Still, between the dirty road, the lack of standardized attire, the doping, and the cheating, the 1904 Olympic Games — and the marathon in particular — stand out in history as some of the most bizarre.