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Men's marathon at the Games of the I Olympiad | ||||||||||
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Venue | Marathon to Athens | |||||||||
Date | 10 April 1896 | |||||||||
Competitors | 17 from 5 nations | |||||||||
Winning time | 2:58:50 OR | |||||||||
Medalists | ||||||||||
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Athletics at the 1896 Summer Olympics | |
---|---|
Track events | |
100 m | men |
400 m | men |
800 m | men |
1500 m | men |
110 m hurdles | men |
Road events | |
Marathon | men |
Field events | |
Long jump | men |
Triple jump | men |
High jump | men |
Pole vault | men |
Shot put | men |
Discus throw | men |
The men's marathon event was a special race invented as part of the Athletics at the 1896 Summer Olympics programme. Seventeen athletes from 5 nations competed. [1] It was the capstone of the athletics programme. The event was won by Spyridon Louis and was the only Greek victory in athletics.
Michel Bréal originated the idea of a race from the city of Marathon to Athens, taking inspiration from the legend of Pheidippides. The first such marathon race was a Greek national competition that served as a qualifier for the Olympic marathon, won by Charilaos Vasilakos. The length of the marathon in 1896 was approximately 40 km (25 mi). [2]
While twenty-five athletes traveled to Marathon for the race, only seventeen actually began the race.
At least one woman, Stamata Revithi, attempted to enter the race, but this was rejected. Officially, the reason given was that her entry came after the deadline; unofficially, the reason was her gender. [3] She ran the course on her own the next day, covering the distance in 5½ hours. [4]
There are also references to a woman named Melpomene attempting to run; there is dispute whether this was a second woman, or instead it was Revithi. [5]
Just as in the 1500 metre race, Albin Lermusiaux took the lead early. Edwin Flack and Arthur Blake maintained second and third place, until Blake dropped out at 23 kilometres. At 32 kilometres, Lermusiaux dropped out as well, leaving Flack in the lead as Spyridon Louis was making full use of his endurance to reach the front.
Exhausted from trying to maintain his pace, Flack dropped out of the race with three kilometres left, leaving Louis alone at the front; he stormed home to finish the 40 kilometre race in one minutes and ten seconds under three hours.
Vasilakos finished second, followed by Spyridon Belokas, who held off a fast-finishing Gyula Kellner to seemingly complete a Greek top-three sweep.
However, Kellner subsequently lodged a protest, claiming Belokas had covered part of the course by carriage after having supposedly dropped out of the race: the protest was upheld, and Belokas was disqualified.
Marathon distances at the time were not standardized and records were not officially recognized. The best time in a qualifying race was by Lavrentis. [6]
World record | Ioannis Lavrentis (GRE) | 3:11:27 (u) | n/a | n/a |
Olympic record | New event | n/a | n/a | n/a |
The following record was established during the competition:
Date | Event | Athlete | Nation | Distance (m) | Record |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
April 10 | Final | Spyridon Louis | Greece | 2:58:50 | OR |
The runners traveled to the town of Marathon on Thursday night. They assembled on the starting bridge at 2 p.m. on Friday. [7]
Date | Time | Round | |
---|---|---|---|
Gregorian | Julian | ||
Friday, 10 April 1896 | Friday, 29 March 1896 | 14:00 | Final |
Rank | Athlete | Nation | Time | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Spyridon Louis | Greece | 2:58:50 | OR | |
Charilaos Vasilakos | Greece | 3:06:03 | ||
Gyula Kellner | Hungary | 3:06:35 | ||
4 | Ioannis Vrettos | Greece | Unknown | |
5 | Eleftherios Papasymeon | Greece | Unknown | |
6 | Dimitrios Deligiannis | Greece | Unknown | |
7 | Evangelos Gerakeris | Greece | Unknown | |
8 | Stamatios Masouris | Greece | Unknown | |
9 | Sokratis Lagoudakis | Greece | Unknown | [1] |
— | Edwin Flack | Australia | DNF (37 km) | |
— | Albin Lermusiaux | France | DNF (32 km) | |
— | Ioannis Lavrentis | Greece | DNF (24 km) | |
— | Georgios Grigoriou | Greece | DNF (24 km) | |
— | Arthur Blake | United States | DNF (23 km) | |
— | Ilias Kafetzis | Greece | DNF (9 km) | |
— | Dimitrios Christopoulos | Greece | DNF (? km) | |
DQ | Spyridon Belokas | Greece | 3:06:30 |
The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad and commonly known as Athens 1896, was the first international Olympic Games held in modern history. Organised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had been created by French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin, it was held in Athens, Greece, from 6 to 15 April 1896.
The marathon is a long-distance foot race with a distance of 42.195 km, usually run as a road race, but the distance can be covered on trail routes. The marathon can be completed by running or with a run/walk strategy. There are also wheelchair divisions. More than 800 marathons are held throughout the world each year, with the vast majority of competitors being recreational athletes, as larger marathons can have tens of thousands of participants.
At the 1896 Summer Olympics, the first modern Olympiad, twelve athletics events were contested. A total of 25 medals were awarded. The medals were later denoted as 37 modern medals. All of the events except the marathon were held in the Panathinaiko Stadium, which was also the finish for the marathon. Events were held on 6 April, 7 April, 9 April, and 10 April 1896. Altogether, 63 athletes, all men, from nine nations competed. This made athletics the most international of the nine sports at the 1896 Games.
At the 1904 Summer Olympics, twenty-five athletics events were contested. A total of 74 medals were awarded.
Edwin Harold Flack was an Australian athlete and tennis player. Also known as "Teddy", he was Australia's first Olympian, being its only representative in 1896, and the first Olympic champion in the 800 metres and the 1500 metres running events.
This list is a chronological progression of record times for the marathon. World records in the marathon are now ratified by World Athletics, the international governing body for the sport of athletics.
Shambel Abebe Bikila was an Ethiopian marathon runner who was a back-to-back Olympic marathon champion. He is the first Ethiopian Olympic gold medalist, winning his and Africa's first gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome while running barefoot. At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, he won his second gold medal. In turn, he became the first athlete to successfully defend an Olympic marathon title. In both victories, he ran in world record time.
Spyridon Louis, commonly known as Spyros Louis, was a Greek water carrier who won the first modern-day Olympic marathon at the 1896 Summer Olympics. Following his victory, he was celebrated as a national hero.
Albin Georges Lermusiaux was a French athlete and sport shooter who competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.
'Arthur Charles "Skipper" Blake was an American athlete who competed in the 1500 meters and the marathon at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.
Charilaos Vasilakos was a Greek athlete and the first man to win a marathon race. He also won a silver medal at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.
Spyridon Belokas was a Greek athlete. He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. He was born in Athens.
Stamata Revithi was a Greek woman who ran the 40-kilometre marathon during the 1896 Summer Olympics. The Games excluded women from competition, but Revithi insisted that she be allowed to run. Revithi ran one day after the men had completed the official race, and although she finished the marathon in approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes and found witnesses to sign their names and verify the running time, she was not allowed to enter the Panathinaiko Stadium at the end of the race. She intended to present her documentation to the Hellenic Olympic Committee in the hopes that they would recognize her achievement, but it is not known whether she did so. No known record survives of Revithi's life after her run.
The men's 800 metres race was the second-longest of the four flat-track events on the Athletics at the 1896 Summer Olympics programme. The preliminary heats were the third event held on 6 April. The nine competitors were split into two groups. The top two athletes in each heat advanced to the final, which was held on 9 April.
The men's 1500 metres race, the longest flat-track race of the 1896 Summer Olympics programme, was the last event on 7 April. It was run in a single heat, with eight athletes competing.
The men's road race was the only road cycling event on the Cycling at the 1896 Summer Olympics programme. The course was 87 kilometres long and the race was held on 12 April. Seven cyclists from three nations competed. The event was won by Aristidis Konstantinidis of Greece. August von Gödrich of Germany took second, while Edward Battell finished third.
Franjo Mihalić was a Yugoslav and Croatian long-distance runner best known for his 1958 win at the Boston Marathon and his marathon silver medal in the 1956 Summer Olympics. Mihalić competed mostly in marathons, road races and cross country races, distinguishing himself by winning many top-level international competitions in the 1950s and setting a combined 25 Croatian and later Yugoslavian national records in long-distance track events between 5000 m and 25 km. In 1957, he became the inaugural winner of the Golden Badge, the award for the best sportsperson of Yugoslavia awarded by the daily Sport. He is regarded as the most accomplished male athlete in the history of Croatian, Serbian and Yugoslav track and field.
Robert Arthur Fowler was a Newfoundland-born long-distance runner who was recognized by the International Association of Athletics Federations as having set a world's best in the marathon on January 1, 1909 with a time of 2:52:45.4 at the Empire City Marathon in Yonkers, New York.
The First Olympics: Athens 1896 is a 1984 American television miniseries produced by Columbia Pictures Television for broadcast by the NBC network. This television miniseries tells the story of the founding of the modern Olympics by focusing on individuals in several countries and their preparations and eventual competition in Athens in 1896. The two-part mini-series originally aired in the United States on May 20, 1984.
The marathon at the Summer Olympics is the only road running event held at the multi-sport event. The men's marathon has been present on the Olympic athletics programme since 1896. Nearly ninety years later, the women's event was added to the programme at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.