Olympics-royalty set course of epic 1908 marathon
- Royal enthusiasm at the height of the golden Edwardian summer helped to determine first the course and then the length of the epic 1908 London Olympic marathon.
The race concluded with a potential fatality when Italian Dorando Pietri collapsed after entering the stadium on a stiflingly hot July afternoon. His disqualification after he was helped to his feet led paradoxically to an astonishing explosion in marathon racing. John Bryant, a distinguished Fleet Street newspaper editor, painstakingly dissected the myths and misconceptions surrounding the most celebrated and controversial of all Olympic marathons while researching his book “The Marathon Makers”.
One of them is the reasoning behind the length of the race, which established the now standard distance of 26 miles 385 yards (42.195 km). In an interview with Reuters, Bryant said the British royal family's interest had begun at the interim Athens Olympics of 1906, where as guests of the Greek royal family they were captivated by the marathon, the final event of the Games. During the Games, Mount Vesuvius erupted, exacerbating economic problems in Italy which meant the Rome Olympics scheduled for 1908 needed to be rescheduled. The first of several remarkable characters associated with the 1908 Games came to the fore in Lord Desborough, who was captain of the Brit- ish fencing team in Athens and a great friend of King Edward VII.
“They said to him: 'Could you possibly run the Olympics?'” said Bryant. “And he said: 'Well let me go and have a word with the King' and he was his best mate so he goes to the King.
“Well the King couldn't be more enthusiastic and he had just gone to the last event of the Games with his cousins, the Greek royal family, and he had just seen this fantastic spectacle.” With the irresistible bravura and confidence of the times, which had led to the founding of the greatest empire the world has seen, Desborough and his colleagues drafted the Olympic rules for London. They were even ratified at the 1907 Hague convention which devised the rules of war. RUNNYMEDE REJECTED Officials briefly considered starting the marathon at Runnymede, where King John had sealed the Magna Carta curbing the powers of the monarch and providing the basis for an English citizen's rights.
“But the King interferes again and says you can use Windsor Castle by all means, you can't get more historic than that,” said Bryant.
The 1896 marathon had been staged over 40 kms (25 miles) from Marathon to Athens but no standard was subsequently agreed. Jack Andrew, the official who measured the 1908 course, set a distance of 26 miles starting outside Windsor Castle and finishing in the White City stadium in west London.
“Then, the chief of police went to Jack Andrew and said we've got a problem over this marathon, there are going to be crowds there at the start and, actually, I need extra men to control the crowds,” Bryant said.
“At this point I think Desborough talks to Edward VII and I always kind of envisage Edward VII sitting back over a nice glass of wine and a cigar and saying 'hold it in the castle, hold it in the castle grounds. Nobody can get in there'.” The meticulous Andrew determined the redrafted course measuring 26 miles from its start in the castle grounds to the Olympic stadium, where the Royal Box in which Queen Alexandra would be waiting overlooked the finish line.
A committee decided to take the longest route to the finish, adding 385 yards, to allow the maximum number of people to see the ath- letes. Dorando's agonised, stumbling entrance into the stadium remains one of the most dramatic of Olympic moments, with an international impact Bryant believes to be equivalent to the furore generated when Roger Bannister broke the four-minute barrier for the mile.
It was chronicled for Daily Mail readers by Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, who had been wrongly credited with helping the Italian across the line. The burly man in the photo of the finish is, in fact, the stadium doctor Michael Bulger. “Dorando collapsed in the tunnel and the doctor took his pulse and said he was quite pulseless,” said Bryant. “So he ran around with Dorando, waiting to catch him.” TRANS-ATLANTIC RIVALRY Dorando was awarded the race but, after an American protest, the gold medal went to the tough Irish-American Johnny Hayes.
Then the promoters stepped in, urging the pair to stage a series or rematches.
“They said you could make a fortune if you run this race again, but it has to the exact same distance. After that there was marathon fever. They didn't just have one race, these two were racing every fortnight,” Bryant said.
“Marathon fever took over in America, in Britain. They put tables in the middle with champagne, there were champagne dinners.
“And this distance had been burned into the consciousness by this race that made headlines all around the world.”