WHEN RUNNERS PIT THEMSELVES AGAINST HISTORY
Athens: Athens’s classic marathon is the grandsire of all long-distance races and on the bucket list of most self-respecting runners — but for antiquity buffs, there are other Greek races with an even stronger historical pedigree.
The 42.2-kilometre (26.2mile) race, named after the small town of Marathon near Athens, has become a byword for ‘ordeal’ and one of the highlights of every summer Olympics.
It is also largely a late19th century creation, one of the few sports events specifically crafted to stir interest for the Olympic Games’s revival in Athens in 1896.
As Baron Pierre de Coubertin sought to garner support among amateur sports proponents for the first Olympiad in 1,500 years, French classical philologist Michel Breal pitched a proposal.
“If you go to Athens, see if a race can be organised from Marathon (to Athens)... it would give a flavour of antiquity,” Breal wrote to Coubertin in 1894.
A classicist, Breal knew the legend of the runner Pheidippides, dispatched to Athens after the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE to announce, against all odds, that an invading Persian army had been defeated.
“If we knew the time required by the Greek warrior, we could set the record,” Breal wrote.
The trouble was, ancient writers left no conclusive evidence on the runner’s identity, let alone the exact route he followed.
Herodotus, writing decades after the battle, makes no reference to Pheidippides at Marathon. Later writers have called the legendary runner Philippides, Eucles and Thersippus.
FOOTSTEPS OF PHEIDIPPIDES
But Herodotus, who based his history on interviews with eye-witnesses of the battle, says Pheidippides managed an even greater achievement — running some 240 kilometres (150 miles) from Athens to Sparta and back.
Athens had wanted Sparta’s renowned warriors to join the fight against the Persians. And Pheidippides was sent to deliver the message.
“He reached Sparta on the very next day,” Herodotus wrote.
Sadly, the mission was a failure. The Spartans were in the middle of a religious festival honouring the god Apollo, which prevented them from fighting.
So Pheidippides ran back to Athens emptyhanded.
Some 2,400 years on, the episode prompted an RAF wing commander named John Foden to wonder if a modern man could cover the distance in 36 hours.