1904 Olympics: Wild Stories, Controversy, and the Strangest Marathon in History

Picture the Olympics that is nothing like we've seen today, where countries don't show up, athletes nearly die from the heat, cheating is rampant people or walking up from the streets just to participate, and gold medals are won by a guy with a wooden leg. And this is just a little bit of what happened in the Third Olympics in nineteen oh four that took place in Saint Louis, Missouri, that is notoriously known as one of the worst Olympics ever held. Join us today as we're going to dive into what happened in this Olympics and how it changed the Olympics forever today on Daily Sports History, let's go. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide because I once yelled, ball, don't lie during a wedding ceremony. So the first modern Olympics happened in Athens, Greece. It was a great story bringing the world together in athletic competition and linking back to history of ancient Greece. And they made the decision to go to other places, not just hold it in Greece. So they the next year they went to Paris, not too far away from Greece in Europe, and then they were like, okay, let's expand even more, and they started to take bids. Like we see the day where countries go to the Olympic Committee and say, hey, you should come here for the Olympic Games. And America really wanted to hold the Olympic Games. And in May of nineteen oh one, the International Olympic Committee awarded Chicago with the third Olympics to be held in nineteen oh four. The thing is, Chicago never held the Olympics because Saint Louis stole it from them. See, Saint Louis was going to put on a World's Fair in nineteen oh four. There's a big event celebrating the Louisiana purchase. And the World's Fair is something that was going on back in the day that was hugely popular. It was an event where you built structures and were really trying to show off all the things that your city could do in showing off the technology and industrial advancements, and back in the day, it was a big deal. They started doing these World's Fairs back in the late seventeen hundreds and they would have them across the world. Probably the most noticeable one is the one they held in Paris because that one they built the Eiffel Tower for and it's still there to this day. And their structures all over these world fairs that have continued to be part of history, and they still have them. In twenty sixteen they held one, but they're not as popular as they were back in the day. Back in the day, people would come from all around to see this because the technology they were showing off was so advanced from what they were used to at the time. And Saint Louis was putting this on in nineteen oh four and the Olympics was supposed to happen in nineteen o four, and they didn't want to have these two huge international events going on at the same time. Saint Louis thought the Olympics would eclipse what they were doing for the Expo, so they basically bullied Chicago into giving them the Olympics, saying they would put on their own international sports competition at the same time and they would pull the best athletes to represent in their competition, basically making the Olympics obsolete. And Chicago believed them, and they said, okay, you can have the Olympics and the IOC actually approved it in nineteen oh two. The transfer from Chicago to Saint Louis, it's not that long of a drive and IOC good nineteen oh three was a very different travel time. And this would be the first Olympics held outside Europe. There's only been two at this point. It's not like it was crazy to have it outside there, but it was also away from where the condensed countries were. Now Europe, there's lots of countries right there, and you can get twenty countries just in Europe to attend this event. But in America we're far away from Europe. Canada's pretty close, Mexico, you got some Caribbean countries as well, but it's harder to get to for many countries, and that was one of the biggest problems. Only thirteen nations hindered the nineteen oh four Olympics compared to twenty six in the nineteen hundred Olympics in France, so it was interesting. But they wanted to make their mark and one of the things they did that was unique is they decided to give out medals for the winners, bronze for third, silver, for a second, first place got gold. This is the first time they ever did that, a tradition that we still do to this day. And they actually designed the gold medals to look like the Greek god Nike in honor the very first Olympics. And they included some important events that hadn't been done before, like boxing, wrestling in the decathlon, as well as some unique events such as the dumbbells in the tug of war. This was the first Olympics to feature women in one event in one sport, and there was only six total out of almost six hundred and fifty athletes. This Olympics was confusing. It started on July first and went till November twenty third. Normally the Olympics last just a few weeks at most. This is months going on during the World's Fair. So everyone was just confused because the Worldfair was doing some sports competitions that weren't part of the Olympics. So were you doing an Olympic event? Was it a World Fair event? And it made nations not want to travel and the travel was hard. The quickest you could get there was a five hour trip going from Europe to the edge of America by steamboat, and then you still had to go from New York to Saint Louis, which is not an easy way to do it. You had to take train, so cars weren't big. There were not planes at the time, so you i had to go by boat and train and it was a tough, tough road just to get there, which is why so many people did not even show up. They also had this thing called Anthropology Days where indigenous and other Western people would compete in anthropologists contests, which were racist. They were just racist, that's all. It was. Indigenous people, black people from Africa that may not even just been from Africa, they may just been former slaves were in these events and just viewed as zoo animals. Basically. It was very sad that this was acceptable at the time, but there was a lot of positive things that happened during this Olympics. Archie Han, who was known as the Milwaukee meteor He won gold in the sixty meter, setting a world record with seven seconds in the one hundred meter, the two hundred meter, showing off his explosive speed. Then Gym Lightbody would win gold in the eight hundred, the fifteen hundred, and the steeplechase, and Harry Hillman would win gold in the four hundred, the two hundred meter hurdles and the four hundred meter hurdles, and ray Ewing would sweep all the jumps, the high jump, the long jump, and the triple jump, which he did also in nineteen hundred. So this was not just these Americans winning because no one else was coming. He was also doing it four years ago. But they weren't the only ones, as German swimmer Emil hanshu Rashi won three swimming goals. Matilda Scott Holloway became the first woman to win three golds, dominating the archery competitions, which is the only event that females were allowed to participate. Frank Kugler remains the only athlete to medal three different sports in one Olympic. He won medals in wrestling, weightlifting, and tugawar and George Paige became the first Black American to win an Olympic medal, taking home bronze in two hurdle events, and interestingly enough, George Eisner, an Olympian, won six medals, including three golds in gymnastics. What made this even more special is he did so on a wooden leg and for years would hold the record for the most gold medals by a single Olympian, but with a one event that stands out more than any other event in this Olympics was the marathon, as it is the worst marathon ever held in the history of marathons. See they held it in the middle of August when it's the hottest time in Saint Louis, so it was already dangerous due to the heat it was that day it was ninety degrees fahrenheit and they did so on unpaved roads, dusty roads that were not roped off, meaning there was still horse in bike car traffic going on, kicking up dust as these runners ran, and there was no regulations and as an experiment, they limited the water for these athletes, giving them one water station at the eleven mile marker. So all the athletes were deh exhausted and actually did not even finish as they would have. Seven nations represented t Swana in Lynn Taljan and Jan Massani who were there part of the anthropology days and just entered in whatever they were wearing and ran barefoot during the event. Frederick Lores suffered from exhaustion and actually hitchhiked in a car for eleven miles and jogged to the stadium as if he had won, claiming it was a joke, even though they told everybody he won and later it would take it away. The true winner ended up being Thomas Hicks, who was suffering from hallucinations during it and nearly collapsed after his trainers gave him cetharsne, which is a toxic stimulant instead of water. They were just doing test on these guys, and he lost eight pounds during the race. He was barely conscious when he made it. And Felix Carnejwal was a Cuban mailman who ran in street clothes with a great mustache and actually stopped to snack on apples from an orchard and took a nap during the race. But well, it's good enough to finish fourth. This race deserves its own episode at some point because it is insane when you dive in deep But it's really what these Olympics were known for, showing that it was not so much putting on the best Olympics, it was just getting events to go. It didn't matter. But despite these flaws, it still set some precedent. It gave us the gold, silver and bronze that we still used to this day, and the Francis Field that they built in Washington University for the Games is still around to this day and celebrated for when they hosted the Olympics. But what it did for us majorly was give us an idea of what not to do for the Olympics, as Saint Louis was not focused on hosting the Olympics itself. They just did not want the World's Fair, which had been around longer than in the Olympics, to be overshadowed. And now I don't even know what the World's Fair is. In the Olympics is one of the most watched sporting events in the world every four years. The question is it better to learn from a bad Olympics or build on a good one. I want to thank you for listening to Today's Daily Sports History. It means a lot to me if you could leave us a comment or review wherever you're listening. That way, I know what you're thinking and your input really helps me put these episodes together and we'll see you on the next one.