Today I would like to share with you a tale I first stumbled across on
Wikipedia. To this day it is the best thing I've ever read on Wikipedia; I'm
talking about the 1904 Summer Olympics men's marathon. You might think that that
sounds pretty boring but you'd be wrong. The whole event turned out to be
hilariously bizarre, it was a total disaster, a complete catastrophe, a cluster
fuckin shit show, an omelette du fromage. Imagine the scene - it's the afternoon in
st. Louis, temperature's a scorching of 32 degrees Celsius - that's 90 degrees
Fahrenheit for those with poor choice in units of measurement. The course for the
race is laid out on dusty country roads. Cars hosting race officials are kicking
up dust clouds all along the track - more on this later - the only source of water
was a well at the 11 mile mark -- yeah, the organizers of this event couldn't tell
their arse from their elbow. You can probably already see some potential
problems. Out of the 32 athletes that competed only 14 managed to finish the
race - that's less than half! What were they doing!? French man
Albert Corey arrived without the correct documents so he wasn't even
allowed to compete for France - gobshite. For some reason they let him compete
anyway - hmmm, strange. He ran for the US - what!? He won silver for them - what!? What kind of
fucking Mickey Mouse setup is this? Imagine if Usain Bolt just showed up to a
race he said; "Ah, fuck it - I'll race for Ireland", Usain Bolt if you're listening
to this please actually do that we'd like to win too. Another competitor Fred
Lorz had to just drop out from the race after about nine miles due to the poor
conditions. He hitched a ride in one of the official's cars back to the stadium.
The car broke down because of course it did. Lorz got out of the car - keep in
mind he had just taken it for 10 miles - and then proceeded to re-enter the race.
Obviously he crossed the finish line first, the cheeky bastard. He had his
picture taken with Alice Roosevelt; daughter of then President Theodore
Roosevelt and he was just about to be awarded the gold
when someone ratted him out. Lorz claimed he was only joking and the AAU took this
in good humor and responded by immediately banning him for life.
The marathon included the first two black Africans to compete in the
Olympics - a move that white people would later come to regret. While in reality
there were just two students from South Africa they were portrayed as two savage
tribesmen brought over as part of a Boer War exhibit - mhmmm, 1904. Yamasani
finished in 12th place and Len Tau finished in 9th; this was regarded as
a disappointment as many observers were sure Len Tau could have done better if he
had not been chased nearly a mile off course by aggressive dogs. A Cuban
postman nearly missed the entire thing, entering at just the last second,
Andarin Carvajal had lost all of his money in New Orleans and he had to hitchhike
all the way to St. Louis. So great - a fucking hobo entered the race. He had to
race in his street clothes and he just cut holes in his trousers to make them
look like shorts. He was doing well in the race but he hadn't eaten in over 40
hours, the poor man; and he was so hungry he had to stop at an orchard during the
race to eat some apples. The apples turned out to be rotting from the inside
and he fell violently ill. He still managed to finish in fourth place, the
absolute madman. William Garcia was another competitor to suffer illness
during the race. He was found almost dead lying on the road with severe internal
injuries from breathing in the clouds of dust from the race officials' cars.
A man almost died. So, so far we've had a Frenchman competing as an American man,
a cheating fucker who almost got away with it, a pack of feral dogs, a penniless
postman hobo and a near fatality. Who won this race? That would be Thomas Hicks,
although calling him a "winner" is probably being more than a bit liberal
with the term. Hicks wanted to stop during the race due to
the exhausting conditions - who could blame him? He was physically restrained
by his trainers from lying down and have a rest, which I'm fairly sure that's
against the rules by today's standards. To keep Hicks competing they hatched the
genius plan to dope him up, which is -- yeah, that's definitely against the rules
by today's standards. So what sort of drugs did they give him? Well,
rat poison, of course, they gave him rat poison. They probably could have done
with learning the difference between performance-enhancing drugs and lethal
toxins. That's a schoolboy error - those things are worlds apart,
they're pretty much opposites actually. Anyway, Hicks continued with the race and by
the time he reached the finish line he was barely able to walk and he was
hallucinating - he was tripping balls. His support team literally carried him
over the line while he shuffled his feet in the air as if still running. He was
awarded gold. He would have died had he not been immediately seen to by several
doctors and Thomas Hicks never raced again.