WEBVTT - The Strange Story of the 1904 Olympic Marathon 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.760 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.840 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.880 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're on a sprint 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:24.079 to retirement. You're on Stuff you should Know a marathon sprint. Yeah, unfortunately, 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:30.960 marathon so never ending, ceaseless ultrathon marathon of all time. 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:33.839 You know, this was another listener suggestion. I feel like 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:37.120 those have been rolling in lately with a lot of 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:41.320 good suggestions, and this was something I had not heard of, 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:44.120 the story of the nineteen oh four marathon. And this 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:45.920 comes to us from Peter Fitzgibbon. 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:48.640 Yeah, and thanks today for helping us out with this 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:52.360 one too. Yeah, thanks all around, Peter Fitzgibbon, what a 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:56.800 great name. Agreed, So thanks a lot, Peter, because this 0:00:56.840 --> 0:00:59.160 is a really interesting story and I hadn't heard anything 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:03.440 about it either, But there was what's widely considered as 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:10.880 the hardest, worst, most difficult marathon ever run. Marathon, not ultrathon. 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:14.280 No again, I'm just specifically talking about marathons, and the 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:17.840 mind bending part of it is it wasn't even an 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:21.480 official marathon link. It was two miles shorter than what 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:25.000 we consider marathons today, and this is still considered the hardest. 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:29.720 And it wasn't because some racing genius came up with 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:34.000 the perfect difficult marathon course. No, it was because the 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:36.520 people involved had no idea what they were doing. Yeah, 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.160 and this was one of the first marathons in the 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:42.560 modern era, in the modern Olympics, it was actually the 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:43.080 third one. 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:43.840 That's right. 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:47.400 If you know, there was no marathon in the the 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.680 og Ancient Games. I think a lot of people think 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:53.480 that maybe there was because of the great story of 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:56.320 how the marathon came to be, but that would happen 0:01:56.400 --> 0:02:01.760 much later. There was a gentleman named Mishe Brielle, who 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:06.960 is a nineteenth century French linguist, and he loved Greek mythology. 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.640 Happened to be good friends with the founder of the 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:15.600 modern Olympics, a guy named Baron Pierre de Corbetin, and 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:18.760 he went to that first IOC meeting braille did, and 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:21.920 he said, hey, guys, we've all heard the story of 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:26.280 the Battle of Marathon in four ninety PC, when the 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.959 Greeks fought the Persians and the Greeks won, and very 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:35.040 famously sent Fidipites the messenger to run twenty four miles 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.640 back to Athens to say we won. We won, And 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:42.280 then when he did that, immediately dropped dead, like we 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:48.239 should commemorate that race by making people run that far 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:50.400 in these modern Olympics. 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:54.040 Yes, and the IOC said, I don't think anyone even 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:58.640 invited you. Who are you? And he said the same 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.480 thing again, almost very it was creepy, and they were 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:03.200 finally like, well, a good idea is a good. 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:04.960 Idea, he says, I'm friends with the baron. 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:10.200 So they decided to include the Olympic marathon in the 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:15.000 inaugural Games in Athens eighteen ninety six, the first modern Olympics, 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.480 and because it was an Athens they were actually able 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:22.640 to make a legit marathon from Marathon to Athens, just 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:24.520 like the original version. 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:25.520 Right yeah. 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:28.840 Their goal was for no one to drop dead when 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:31.400 they got back, and fortunately no one did. Into the 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:36.000 Greek's great delight, Greek runners took the top three spots, 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:39.760 the winner being spirit On lewis not the Greek ist 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:42.320 last name, but his first name definitely screamed Greek. 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:44.920 Did you say, unfortunately no one died? 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:48.360 Or and fortunately I said, and what kind of a 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:49.160 monster do you think? 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:51.440 I am Hey, I knew it, but I just wanted 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:52.880 to clear that up for people. 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:56.080 Oh thank you, you're looking out for me. 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:57.280 I was looking out for you. 0:03:57.760 --> 0:03:58.640 Thank you, my friend. 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:04.760 So nineteen oh four was the third Olympic Games, the 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.960 first one in the US, just as a little bit 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:09.960 of a backdrop because it ties in a bit to 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.760 what happened in Saint Louis. But the nineteen hundred Games 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:16.600 in Paris were a bit of a flop because it 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:20.800 was overshadowed by the Paris Exposition that was held at 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:24.080 the same time, and the same thing basically happened in 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:28.920 Saint Louis. It coincided with their World's Fair aka the 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:34.000 Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exhibition, and it was, you know, just 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:36.520 sort of overshadow At world's fairs were very big deals. 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.200 The Olympics at the time weren't that big of a deal, 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:42.159 in fact, because it wasn't like a big city like 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:44.679 New York or Chicago or something. A lot of American 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:48.239 athletes didn't even come, so we maybe didn't necessarily field 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:51.800 our best. But one noteworthy thing was this was the 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:57.359 first Olympics to debut all three metal colors or I 0:04:57.360 --> 0:04:58.520 Guesstal medals. 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:02.360 Yeah, gold, silver, bronze. Right, I don't mean to be pedantic, Chuck, 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:06.760 I'm sorry in advance, but it's my understanding that it 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:09.279 wasn't until the seventies people called it Saint Louis. I 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:11.040 think up to that point it was Saint Louis. 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:14.240 Okay, I'm glad you puted that out. 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.000 So one of the cool things about the Saint Louis 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:21.240 Olympics is that there was a guy named George iSER 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:23.480 who I read a little bit about. He had a 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.360 wooden leg, and this is a nineteen oh four wooden leg. 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:30.680 He won six medals I think in one day as 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:31.920 an American gymnast. 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:33.480 Did he win leg throwing? 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:36.120 Did he win? 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:37.480 What? Leg throwing? 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:40.240 I didn't know that that was an event. I think 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:42.479 you're thinking of the strongest lumberjack event. 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:45.679 Oh yeah, yeah, okay, that are the Highland Games. Sure. 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:47.120 So he won. 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:51.960 Gymnastic medals with the wooden leg. 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:54.640 Yeah, that's amazing, pretty impressive, six of them. 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:55.440 Yeah. 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:59.000 So this is actually a pretty sweet mashup of our 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:02.240 marathon episode in our Human Zoos episode. They kind of 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:05.880 collide here in this episode, the nineteen oh four marathon 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:08.480 and the reason why is because in nineteen oh four, 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.359 there's a guy named James E. Sullivan, and he was 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:16.919 essentially the guy who ran amateur sports in America, and 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:20.800 he was also on the International Olympic Committee representing America. 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:24.480 He had a lot to do with amateur sports, right. Yeah, 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.680 he was selected as the organizer of the nineteen oh 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:31.960 four Games in Saint Louis. And he's also one of 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:35.640 the reasons why there was such a thing as the 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:39.599 human Zoo at the World's Fair that year too. 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:40.559 Yeah. 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:46.200 He was, by all accounts a pretty xenophobic, racist kind 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:49.240 of guy. One of the things he did later on 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:57.160 famous I say, legendary athlete Jim Thorpe, Indigenous American Jim 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:00.960 Thorpe at his metal strip because Sullivan made a push 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:03.159 to do so because they found out that he played 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:06.680 minor league baseball. Very briefly, I want to do a 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:08.640 thing on a show on Jim Thorpe, by. 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.120 The way, Yeah, I agree, we should definitely do an 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:13.320 episode on him, because in addition to him being such 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:18.920 an amazing athlete, he really apparently got screwed over, not 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:21.840 just by the people taking his medals back, but by 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:24.600 people around him he trusted who basically sold him out 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:25.720 to cover their own hides. 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:31.440 So back to Sullivan, before we get to his human 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:36.600 zoo experience that he cultivated at this World's Fair, just 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:38.920 want to also point out that he was pretty much 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:43.520 exclusively into white men participating in sports, because not only 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:46.960 did he have a bone to pick with Jim Thorpe, 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:50.280 but he did not like black athletes participating. He did 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:53.640 not like women participating. In nineteen oh eight, at the 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:56.000 Olympics in London, they finally said, hey, you know what, 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.120 we should have women in here swimming and running, and 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:03.240 Sullivan refused to let the United States field a women's team. 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:05.440 Right, And like you also said, the World's Fair was 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:07.920 going on at the same time as the Olympics, and 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.560 part of the World's Fair, as was profiled more closely 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:15.960 in our Human Zoos episode, was essentially just a bunch 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:21.040 of indigenous villages from around the world that where the 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:25.320 actual people, like actual indigenous people from the Philippines, from Congo, 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:29.000 from all sorts of other countries at the time, were 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:33.720 brought to be in these living exhibits, essentially to show 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:38.360 just how superior white America and white Europe was to 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:42.920 these people. They were basically paid under contract to act 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:46.480 as native and indigenous as they possibly could, and that 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:49.440 was a big central feature of the nineteen oh four 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:54.400 World's Fair, and being the head of the Department of 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:58.079 Physical Culture for the World's Fair, Sullivan kind of did 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:01.880 a mash up between the World's Fair and their human 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:05.200 zoos and the Olympic Games that he was organizing and 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:08.360 came up with what were called the Anthropology Games, whereas 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:10.400 he also called them the Special Olympics. 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:11.000 That's right. 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:15.920 These were athletic contests where they would get white Americans 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:21.240 and pit them against indigenous people people of color. In 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:24.440 the newspaper there in Saint Louis, you know, things like 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:28.400 barbarians meet in athletic games, and it was, you know, 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:31.680 it was like an exhibition again of like to try 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:37.360 and show the superiority of white athletes for this World's Fair, 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:38.880 and isn't everyone gonna love it? 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.000 Yeah, So they came up with the shot put, the 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:45.559 long jump, the high jump, the mile run. And I'm 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:47.920 pretty sure we talked about this in the Humans News episode, 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:53.120 but the indigenous people who were recruited to participate on 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:59.240 the indigenous side essentially weren't really told the rules they 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:01.880 were just told go do this essentially, and so of 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:05.480 course they lost. It was super lopsided, and so I guess, 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:08.439 just to be fair, they came up with some indigenous 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:15.119 type events. I made scare quotes everybody, tree climbing, archery, javelin, 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:21.720 and yes, essentially the white athletes mopped the floor with 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:24.880 the indigenous athletes, proving to Sullivan and the rest of 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.840 the white people assembled to watch this stuff that whites 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.160 were inherently superior for another while longer. 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.280 So Sullivan was also the guy that was in charge 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:38.480 of designing this race, even though he probably shouldn't have 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:41.800 been because he did a very poor job designing this course. 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:46.400 He had a theory and it wasn't his idea, but 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:50.000 there was a theory at the time where something called 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:54.880 purposeful dehydration was the way forward for endurance athletes. That is, 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:58.680 don't drink it much, don't eat much, because that'll just 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.920 upset your stomach and it'll not help you in your race. 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.520 So he said, hey, why don't we try this out 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:09.120 here and we'll just put one water station close to 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:11.760 the twelve mile mark and not let them drink any 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:13.880 water aside from that, and we'll see how it shakes out. 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:16.640 Yeah, from what I can tell, it was you would 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:19.559 be disqualified if you were caught drinking water other than 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:23.280 at that station. So yeah, I know that. So the 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:27.000 runners involved had support teams who were basically helping them 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.280 along with like, you know, keeping their spirits up or whatever, 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.240 but one of the things they were absolutely forbidden from 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:36.199 doing is giving their athlete water their runner water. 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:36.680 Yeah. 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:40.199 So it sounds nuts purposeful dehydration, but if you stop 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:42.440 and think about, you know, it's also not a good 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:44.680 idea to eat a bunch of stuff and then go 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:47.840 out and run today. I think this is people just 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:50.320 mistakenly thought that about water at the time too. 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:51.320 Yeah. 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:53.400 The other bad idea was they started this thing at 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:57.160 three in the afternoon in August, and Saint Louis, which 0:11:57.200 --> 0:12:02.160 is hot and humid, it was ninety degrees that late afternoon, 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.240 you know, into early evening is most times the hottest 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.800 part of the day. And not only that, but he said, hey, 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:11.679 let's run it out there on the dirt road, which 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.160 may have been okay if it was just these what 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:17.920 was it, thirty two runners running, but they had a 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.840 team of horses running in front of them to try 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:24.480 and like clear the road and lead the way along 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:29.199 with doctors and race officials and journalists. So they're just 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:33.600 kicking up like clouds of dust that you know, reportedly 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:36.160 you couldn't even see through at times that they're having 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:37.840 to run through and breathe this stuff in. 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.920 Yeah. Yeah, basically the whole time they're just choking on 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:46.040 dust apparently. Also, I think that there were regular cars 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:48.080 just using the road too at the time, so it 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:51.079 was not it was just a poorly designed, poorly planned, 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:53.320 poorly executed thing altogether. 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:53.959 Yeah. 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:55.719 There was one other thing about it too that I 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:58.800 think most marathons would be, like what there were seven 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:02.240 hill climbs. They range from one hundred feet to three 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:04.959 hundred feet, and a three hundred foot hill is as 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:08.080 tall as a twenty to thirty story building. I'm sure 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:10.760 it's not nearly as steep as climbing up a thirty 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:14.240 story building, but still you're walking up a substantial or 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.679 running up a substantial incline to a substantial height and 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:23.120 then back down seven times. That's on top of everything else. 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:26.640 That just is everything that's set up this race to 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:29.520 be just legendary. I mean, we're talking about one hundred 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:30.560 and twenty years later, you. 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:32.120 Know, yeah, Heartbreak Kill. 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:34.280 Just to compare, if you don't know what kind of 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:38.319 elevation rise that is for a marathon. For the Boston Marathon, 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:42.000 I think it's about ninety feet well, and I'm not 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:44.839 sure of the actual you know, I think it's I 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:47.000 think it's about a half mile for Heartbreak Hill. But 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:49.920 again I'm not really sure how far that three hundred 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:51.680 feet was, but it's more than three times, so it 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:52.400 couldn't have been fun. 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:54.400 Are you are you in a marathon? Are you going 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:55.199 to run a marathon? 0:13:55.960 --> 0:14:01.680 Am I into marathons? I've never run more than two 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:03.200 miles in my life. 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:06.959 Well, I mean, hey, they say the journey toward a 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:09.840 marathon starts with a two mile run. No, no, no. 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:12.040 My line that I always use is I don't even 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:13.720 like to drive twenty six miles. 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:15.920 That's a good line. 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:17.199 Man. Not not into it. 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:20.280 I say, we take a break and come back and 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:22.320 start talking about some of the runners that were in 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:22.680 this thing. 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:47.000 Okay, all right, we'll be right back. All right. 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:50.440 So I mentioned that thirty two people participated in this 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:54.320 race in nineteen oh four, fourteen would end up finishing 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:57.000 the race, which is by far the fewest ever in 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:01.520 Olympic history still to this day. But you know, we'll 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:03.160 kind of go through some of the runners here, because 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.440 some were more experienced than others, some were wackier than others. 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:10.720 Three had won the Boston Marathon, so they were you know, 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:14.800 there were some legit experienced marathoners in there, but there 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:19.480 were definitely some dudes running this race that and again 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:22.840 in nineteen oh four. Running marathons wasn't you know nowadays, 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:24.160 if you do that kind of thing, that's your full 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:28.560 time job basically, you know, if you're competitive, that is 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:32.080 like at an Olympic level. But back then it was 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:35.840 just like, hey, I do this. I run a bakery 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:39.560 or I'm a professional clown. But I'm pretty good. You know, 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.440 I can run a long way, so I'm in the Olympics. 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:45.520 Right. There was a guy named Fred Lowers who was 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.800 a brick player, and he had won a five mile 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:55.160 race sponsored by Sullivan's Amateur Athletic Union. Goodness, yeah, sure, 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:58.680 five miles marathon. What's the difference. There's a guy named 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:02.000 Albert Corey. He worked at Slaughterhouse in Chicago. He was 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:07.240 from France, so I guess Albert Carrier Corey, I blew 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:10.320 up in my face. And then there was one of 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:15.560 the best known non professional or non one of the 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.240 best known walk ons I guess you could call him 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.840 same was Felix Carvea Hall and he was from Cuba. 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:24.200 He was five feet one inch and he was one 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:25.800 hundred percent awesome. 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:30.760 He was he was He had a big personality. He 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:34.520 was quite a character according to all accounts. At various 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.400 time during the race, he would he would stop just 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:39.520 to chat it up with people who were cheering him on. 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:43.440 He would playfully like steal peaches out of their hands 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:47.080 as he was running. He showed up in long sleeves 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:50.160 and long pants and everyone was like, dude, you got 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:52.960 to cut those pants down at least and luckily enough 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:56.280 there was a someone there with a knife and cut 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:58.320 them off at the knees for him, like right before 0:16:58.320 --> 0:16:59.000 the race started. 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:04.960 Yeah, he was no stranger to running or moving long distances. 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:09.640 His nickname was Anderene the Walker, and he was well 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:12.080 known in Cuba already because he had walked the length 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.040 of Cuba and back at least once. I saw it 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:18.520 twice in one source, that's seven hundred and seventy seven 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:21.960 miles and He just did it because he wanted to. 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:24.680 I saw him compared to the turn of the century 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:26.520 Cuban Forrest Gump. 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:29.679 I wonder how he liked his shrimp. 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.680 That's a great question. He probably liked it free because 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:35.720 he very frequently didn't have any money. 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:37.320 Yeah. 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:41.399 He was also a messenger, supposedly ran thirty miles a 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:45.159 day as part of his job. When he and this 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:48.200 is where it gets really kind of fun. They didn't 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:51.399 They weren't going to pay his way. Cuba was like sorry. 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:53.520 I think the mayor of Evan was like, you know, 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:54.920 we're not going to pay your way to go there. 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.159 You're welcome to race, but we're not supporting this financially. 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:02.399 He started running around hall in circles in protest and 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.439 got so many supporters. They said, all right, here's the 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:09.920 money book, your passage on a steamship, which he took 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:13.960 to New Orleans and supposedly was lost his money gambling 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.320 and had a hitchhike close to seven hundred miles to 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:18.560 Saint Louis from there. 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:22.440 Yeah, he hitchhiked and walked, And I saw that by 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.160 the time he arrived in Saint Louis for the race, 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:28.040 he hadn't eaten in two days, so he ran that 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.680 marathon without having eaten the last two days. 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:32.760 Yeah. 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:34.600 You also said that he liked to joke around with 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.040 people and stop and chat with spectators and stuff. Apparently 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:40.600 he didn't speak English, and I also saw they didn't 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:44.000 really speak Spanish, that he spoke some strange slangy dialect 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:49.359 of Cuban or from Cuba, and that people didn't necessarily 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:51.280 know what he was talking about. Yeah, well, I could 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:54.320 tell he was so animated. You were just engrossed in 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:56.040 what he was saying, and maybe kind of got what 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.320 he was saying, the general broad strokes of what he 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:01.320 was trying to get cross, or at the very least 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:03.000 you get a laugh out of you. That's that's how 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:03.919 I kind of took all that. 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:04.920 Yeah. 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:06.960 I know I've said this before, but when I first 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:13.120 traveled through Europe in the mid nineties, I spent an 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:18.600 entire night at a German brew house with my friend 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:20.920 that I was traveling with, hanging out with this old 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:21.560 German guy. 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:22.160 I mean old. 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:23.919 He was probably in his forties, but we were in 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:27.320 our early twenties. Old he seemed ancient. But yeah, hung 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:29.960 out with this guy drinking with him for probably five hours. 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:32.320 He didn't speak a word of English and I spoke 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:36.160 very bad German, but we communicated all night long. 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:38.640 It's the international language of beer. 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:40.840 I exactly ed love. 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:45.719 We kissed later on, very nice after drinking for five hours. 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:46.760 Yeah, imagine that. 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:53.360 So carve Hal is again the biggest personality to emerge 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:55.520 out of this, but he was far from the only 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.760 kind of character. I guess. There were two guys and 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:03.320 it's awesome. There's a picture of them together, Leneyu Yanni 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:06.480 and I don't know if it's Yan or John, but 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:11.280 Yan Masciani. They were both from South Africa and they 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:15.879 were from the Swana tribe Dswana, and they were at 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:18.800 the World's Fair because they were some of the indigenous 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:21.160 people who've been imported to really kind of play up 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:26.840 their indigenousness and also to reenact the Boer War between 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:30.399 the Dutch and the English that had just concluded, and 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:34.280 they in the war. They had been messengers for the Boers, 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:36.679 so they were kind of recreating this on the daily. 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:39.600 They were also involved in I think they ran a 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:44.879 marathon in the Anthropology Games. I have no idea how 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:49.879 they were actually brought into the actual Olympic Marathon. The 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:54.760 main one, the closest explanation that I saw is that 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:59.680 there was not a lot of internationality among the participants. Again, 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:02.879 like you said, people just weren't coming. I think d 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:06.320 kouber Tan, the guy who founded the modern Olympics, didn't 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:08.760 even bother to show up. That was that poorly attended 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:14.560 in that klue Ge, Right, So they needed to make 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:19.240 it more international, and so they had too on Yani 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.080 and Mashiani run in this marathon. That's the best explanation 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:25.919 I could see of how two black athletes ended up 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:28.520 running in the Olympic Mathon they would actually become the 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:32.080 first black African athletes in Olympic history of any event 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:36.240 of any sport. Yeah, and the first or the last 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:39.920 to represent South Africa for another eighty six years until 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:44.560 apartheid was taken down taken apart Wow. And then there's 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:47.960 one other thing about tu Yani to on Yani, he 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:51.000 was a mailman, which will come into play in just 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:51.600 a little bit. 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:52.480 Yeah. 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:54.399 I love the picture of those guys, like you mentioned, 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:57.719 it's the look on their faces a little bit like 0:21:58.480 --> 0:21:59.120 we're gonna. 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:04.119 Do what it's like studiously avoiding looking perplexed, but I 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:05.480 think they're kind of perplexed. 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:08.320 Yeah, it's we're gonna do what slash we got this. 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:11.240 Yeah, it's kind of got that feel for sure. 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:12.960