The 1904 Olympic Marathon That Went Completely Off The Rails

The 1904 Olympics were originally awarded to Chicago. Organizers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, a mammoth World’s Fair in St. Louis, threatened to host their own separate athletic competition if the Olympics weren’t relocated there. They were successful, and the Olympic Games became part of the fair. The Olympics were spread out over four-and-a-half months as part of the fair’s entertainment. Most European athletes couldn’t afford the cost of travel and stayed home. So the field for the marathon was dominated by Americans.

It sounds crazy now, but James Sullivan, director of the Amateur Athletic Union and of the Olympic Games, thought that water caused cramps and reduced endurance. So the course had only one water stop, which was a well at the halfway mark of a course almost 25 miles long.

The race began in the late afternoon during a hot St. Louis County summer. The temperature was around 90 degrees, with humidity making it feel like more. Racers ran along broken, unpaved dirt roads while official cars transporting doctors and reporters zoomed by them. Dust filled the air, and racers were forced to inhale it for miles.

That afternoon at Francis Field Stadium, 32 athletes from seven countries assembled on the track. The Olympic marathon had no qualifying time requirements in 1904, so former Boston winners ran alongside local amateurs and fair workers who had just felt like running a long race. Only 14 of the 32 runners made it to the finish.

Distance runner Frank Pierce of the Seneca Nation, who competed as a member of a New York athletic club, took the lead in the opening lap around the stadium track. But the heat and dust of the road forced him to drop out of the race. Pierce was the first known Native American Olympic athlete. Although he did not cross the finish line, Pierce had already made his mark simply by starting.

Among the runners that day were two Tswana men named Len Tau and Jan Mashiani, who had been dispatch runners in the Second Boer War. They were now taking part in a Boer War re-enactment exhibit at the World’s Fair. Neither man was part of an official team, and both took off alone, running barefoot on a rough dirt road. Tau finished 9th, and Mashiani finished 12th. They became the first Black African Olympic athletes.

Carvajal was a Cuban postman who raised funds for his trip to St. Louis by putting on exhibitions. As the legend goes, he lost it all gambling with dice in New Orleans and had to hitch a ride and walk most of the way to St. Louis. He arrived at Francis Field just moments before the starter’s pistol, clad in street shoes and trousers, which a fellow spectator promptly cut off at the knee with a pair of shears.

The race took place on nearly 25 miles of brutal, dusty dirt road. The heat and dust worsened, causing many runners to drop out or become ill. Of the 32 entrants, 18 withdrew from the race due to exhaustion, heat, or dehydration. Many of them fell on the side of the road, vomiting or otherwise unable to continue. No one actually died, but many others became quite sick.

The year before the 1904 Games, John Lordon had won the Boston Marathon, and he was considered a favorite to repeat. But within a few miles, the dust he was inhaling caused him to vomit violently and have severe stomach cramps, forcing him to pull out. He recuperated with no permanent damage, but Lordon’s departure was indicative of just how quickly the course was starting to tear up runners.

California’s William Garcia breathed the heavy dust kicked up by the escort cars, and it eventually ate a hole in the lining of his stomach. He fell 8 miles from the finish line and was found by bystanders. The doctors determined he had severe internal stomach bleeding and that he was hours away from death. He survived because of emergency treatment in the hospital, one of the more blatant signs that the race itself was dangerous.

The winner of the 1902 Boston Marathon was Sam Mellor, who took the lead in the middle stages of the race. But he had only that single water stop behind him, and he began to experience severe leg cramping at about mile 16, which caused him to drop out of the race. Mellor recovered from his ordeal without serious injury, but this allowed fellow runner Thomas Hicks to assume the position of leader.

The Cuban postman from earlier, Félix Carvajal, had not eaten throughout the entire day, and during the race stopped to talk with spectators and grab peaches from an official’s car. Then he wandered into an orchard and ate some green apples. After he began cramping, he lay down in the grass for a bit, got back up, and ran the rest of the way, placing 4th overall.

Len Tau, the Tswana runner we saw earlier with no shoes, was running in a top-five position through rural St. Louis County when a pack of wild dogs ran him off course for over a mile onto a field of open farmland. He managed to fend them off, make his way back onto the route, and finish 9th without being seriously injured.

Fred Lorz, a New York bricklayer, had cramps in his stomach after nine miles or so. He got out of the race, hopped into an official escort automobile, and rode for 11 miles, waving at the runners and spectators along the way. The car eventually broke down near the stadium, so Lorz got out and, for no reason in particular, jogged the rest of the way.

Lorz jogged into Francis Field fully rested and crossed the line first in a time of 3 hours and 13 minutes, surrounded by cheering crowds while posing for photos with a laurel wreath around his neck. But before a single gold medal could be awarded, both fans and race organizers learned of Lorz’s 11-mile car ride. He confessed right away that he hadn’t intended to claim the win. Lorz was disqualified immediately and was banned for life from competition.

Thomas Hicks, an English-born American brass worker, became the frontrunner after Mellor withdrew and Lorz jumped in a car. Near the end, with 10 miles or so to go, dehydration and heat stroke had reduced Hicks to an almost stop-and-go pace. He implored his trainers, Charles Lucas and Hugh McGrath, to allow him to lie down. They wouldn’t, fearful that an American might lose.

Seven miles from the finish, Hicks’s trainers, Charles Lucas and Hugh McGrath, fed him egg white laced with a small amount of strychnine sulfate, a nervous-system stimulant that was also in rat poison. When he slacked up again, they gave him another dose along with a shot of brandy to chase it down. There were no doping regulations in 1904, and strychnine was a legal, if dangerous, athletic stimulant of the era.

For the last two miles of the race, the strychnine, the brandy, and the sheer amount of fluid lost turned Hicks’s skin ash-gray and his eyes glazed, said his trainer, Lucas. Hicks was convinced that he had another 20 miles to go. He had no strength left. His legs just carried him forward, somehow in the direction of the stadium.

Lorz’s lifetime ban was subsequently rescinded after six months, once other runners confirmed he hadn’t planned any fraud. He then went on to win the Boston Marathon legitimately the following April. French-born Albert Corey, a man working in a Chicago meatpacking plant, finished 2nd to claim the silver medal. 1904 officials had credited him with being American because of missing documentation, but in a 2023 reassessment, Olympic historians reattributed his silver medal to France.

Hicks couldn’t lift his legs as he entered the stadium. Lucas and McGrath supported him by the arms and carried him the last 40 yards with his legs dangling below. That aid was permitted under 1904 rules, and the judges approved the result. Thomas Hicks got the gold medal and set the slowest winning time ever in an Olympic marathon. The runner collapsed nearly comatose at the finish line. It took four physicians several hours to bring him back to life. He abandoned competitive long-distance running soon afterward.

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