The Overwhelming Disaster of the 1904 St Louis Olympics; or, How to Win a Gold Medal Through Ingesting Rat Poison, Stealing Fruit and Outright Cheating
The Olympics started in the late 19th century.
Ok, well, technically the Olympics started way back when (around 8 BCE, I think) with the ancient Greeks, who all met in a stadium and raced and wrestled each other while extremely naked and swarthy, but that was a whole other kettle of nonsense and ended in the 4th century BC. But the MODERN Olympics, with which I am obsessed, started in the late 19th century, set up by a French guy with an incredibly French name that I forget. Baron something.
In the beginning, the modern Olympics weren’t that big of a deal. Like, people liked them, but it wasn’t career-defining, steroid-your-balls-off-and-train-til-you-die kinda stuff. The first Olympics, in 1896, had about 240-odd competitors from around 14 countries which was decent? But whatevs. People didn’t care that much.
After a couple of moderately successful Games, Chicago won the right to host the 1904 games. Again, it was nice, but it wasn’t that big of a thing.
Now, the eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that the 1904 Olympics were not hosted in Chicago. Congrats to you, have a sticker or something.
That same year, the World Fair was being hosted in the nearby St Louis (nearby by American standards, that country is enormous and mostly filled with cornfields and impure thoughts, so ‘nearby’ is a relative and usually incorrect term), and it was a much bigger deal than some athletics competition.
The World Fair, at that time, was apparently just a celebration of racist imperialist fucking madness, and included such delights as “human zoos” and “Anthropology days” where “savages” (read as: Native American and African people) performed for terrible crowds of jeering dickheads, with things like “ethnic dancing” and mud-slinging and Jesus fucking balls history’s just an endless racist nightmare, isn’t it?
But anyway, St Louis didn’t want another international event poaching all the tourists away from their racism festival, so, like a jealous older sibling, they threatened to host their own athletics competition if they weren’t given the Olympics too.
That was the beginning of the 1904 St Louis Olympics, the greatest shitshow in Olympic history (aside from the one run by the literal Nazis, but that’s not particularly funny so I’m not going to go down that road. Also, I guess, the 2020 Olympics, which were cancelled by the plague).
The World Fair! Also the Olympics, I guess, but that has less overt racism so it doesn’t pull the same kind of crowds.
(Sidenote: the Wikipedia article for the 1904 Olympics says they were the “first Olympics ever to be held outside of Europe” which would’ve been way more impressive if it wasn’t, like, the third Olympics).
The first issue that arose was that Russia and Japan were at war, so a bunch of countries didn’t want to show up because of general inter-country awkwardness, and a bunch more countries didn’t show up because it was an enormous pain in the arse to get to St Louis in 1904 (it’s a pain in the arse to get to St Louis now, to be fair). So, of the 651 athletes competing, only 62 of them weren’t American. Which, to be fair, feels very American.
The main disaster of the St Louis Games, however, was the marathon.
Oh man, the 1904 marathon was a shitshow. It’s amazing. Buckle up, sports fans, because this is going to get baffling.
First of all, the course was apparently designed by someone who had a very violent and specific vendetta against runners. It was utterly punishing, with numerous mega-steep hills and cracked stone and thick dust underfoot. They also just… forgot to close the roads, so the runners had to dodge around pedestrians and cars, which kept driving past and spitting dust into their faces. When I say there was a lot of dust, I am extremely not fucking around. One runner, an American called William Garcia, inhaled so much dust that he tore open his stomach lining, collapsed, vomited blood and nearly died.
I’m not going to make an ‘another one bites the dust’ joke because I’m better than that.
Oh, also there was one single water source along the entire course – a well around the 11-mile mark – and it was scorchingly hot, so runners were dropping like flies from dehydration.
This was, by the way, ENTIRELY DELIBERATE, because one of the organisers was a fucking madman called James Sullivan who wanted to test the results of extreme dehydration and stress on the human body because what the fuck, James.
And hoo boy, the competitors themselves were also a trip. While there were a handful of professional marathon runners involved, most of the competitors seemed to be an assortment of absolute randos. Let’s look at the line-up, shall we?
First of all, possibly my favourite competitor of all was Félix Cabajal, a Cuban postman who had raised money to come to the Olympics by running the length of Cuba. Unfortunately, as soon as he reached New Orleans, he lost all his money gambling and had to hitchhike the rest of the way. He rocked up at the finish line in street shoes, dress trousers, a billowy white shirt and a beret, which is, frankly, an incredible look, but probably not the most suited to running a marathon. Taking pity on Félix, one of the other runners at the starting line took some scissors and cut his trousers off at the knee, which makes his whole situation not even slightly better. Either way, he made pretty good progress at first, even though he kept stopping to chat to spectators because he seemingly had no grasp of how races worked.
Look at this absolute lad. That hat. That moustache. That lack of a single fuck given. I can and will die for Félix Cabajal.
Félix also hadn’t eaten for a few days by this point, and was starving, which is an extremely chill state to be in while running the worst marathon of all time. He attempted to steal some peaches from a passing car, and then, when that was unsuccessful, snuck into an orchard at the side of the road to steal some apples like Tom fucking Sawyer. Sadly, the apples didn’t agree with his stomach, and he threw up a bunch and then lay down in the orchard to take a nap.
He came in fourth.
Suck on that, Aesop, you preachy, fable-peddling bastard.
Also competing were two members of the South African Tswana tribe, Jan Mashiani and Len Tau. Both were veterans of the Boer War and were in St Louis to take part in a re-enactment of the Boer War at the World Fair, because who doesn’t love to re-live traumatic experiences for paying audiences of established racists? Both South Africans showed up at the starting line barefoot. Considering the circumstances, both did admirably: Jan Mashiani finished twelfth, and Len Tau finished ninth DESPITE BEING CHASED A FULL MILE OFF COURSE BY FERAL DOGS.
Of course there were feral dogs on the course. Why wouldn’t there be feral dogs on the course? Christ alive, guys.
Ten Greeks showed up, too, because legally you have to have Greeks at all Olympic events. None of them had ever run a marathon before. They did not do great.
All along the way, bear in mind, people were collapsing and puking up blood because they were racing through a hell-course designed by a runner-hating sadist.
And speaking of horrible sadists, one of the few professional marathon runners, an American called Thomas Hicks, spent the course being refused water and instead fed a fun cocktail of brandy, egg whites and strychnine (which, if you’re unaware, is LITERAL RAT POISON) by his trainers. Understandably, Thomas did not have an enjoyable race, and nearly collapsed multiple times, begging for water and to be allowed to stop. He was not allowed to drink water or stop.
Yes clearly this is an acceptable state for a living human to be doing extreme sport in, carry on.
WHY DO YOU ALL HATE RUNNERS, YOU MANIACS? WHAT DID RUNNERS DO TO YOU? DID YOU GET DUMPED BY A RUNNER? DID A RUNNER KILL YOUR FAMILY? WHAT, THEN?
Another utter delight of a competitor was American Fred Lorz, who was both a professional bricklayer and a complete bastard. Fred did all his training at night because he had an actual job, which I respect. Much like many of his fellow runners, he started getting dust-and-dehydration-induced cramps at around the 9-mile mark. Unlike his fellow runners, instead of collapsing and vomiting blood, Fred hopped into a passing car for a lift for a solid 11 miles. He wasn’t sneaky about it either; he happily waved at spectators and other competitors as he went past. Fred got back out a couple of miles before the end, ran the last bit, and won.
BUT IT DOESN’T END THERE.
Alice Roosevelt, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, gave Fred his Olympian leaf hat, and was just about to give him his gold medal when someone pointed out that he had very obviously not run a full marathon, at which point Fred was just like “lol, yeah, my bad guys” and sauntered off.
Fred Lorz: the face of a man who has never felt a second of shame in his entire life. I love him.
But if Fred “Just Get in a Car” Lorz didn’t win, I hear you cry, then who did?
Well I’m very glad you asked, because it was Thomas “Strychnine and Egg Whites” Hicks.
Yep. The race was that much of a shitshow that the guy who’d been pounding rat poison for twenty-six point two miles came in first. His trainers actually had to carry him over the finish line, because he was too weak to hold himself upright, but by that point everyone was just relieved that someone had won and they could end this nightmare at last. As Thomas crossed the finish line, a race official described him thusly: “His eyes were dull, lusterless; the ashen colour of his face and skin had deepened; his arms appeared as weights well tied down; he could scarcely lift his legs, while his knees were almost stiff”. He lost eight pounds over the course of the race.
Eight. Pounds.
STOP TORTURING THESE POOR RUNNING MEN YOU MONSTERS.
Anyway, the marathon was such an enormous disaster that the IOC almost scrapped the event forever.
They didn’t though.
Oh yeah, and the following year, Fred Lorz won the Boston Marathon, a race organised by people who weren’t cackling sociopaths, and he ran the entire way. Fred’s got game, man. I respect Fred.