FOLKLORE FROM 1908 GAMES
‘Fiasco’ may have saved Olympics
After over coming American objections that he was a dreaded professional, Canada’s best long-distance runner ever — Tom Longboat — took the early lead in the London Olympic marathon when he set off from Windsor Castle’s Queen Victoria monument on a scorching summer day in 1908.
But a gold medal for the prerace favourite was not to be.
Although Longboat had won many races in North America, including the 1907 Boston Marathon in a recordbreaking time, the 25-year-old Onondaga Iroquois from Ontario was already struggling badly one-third of the way through the race. At about the 20-mile mark, Longboat collapsed.
Some suggested Longboat, whose Iroquois name was Cogwagee, had been drugged. Others claimed he was drunk. Or not properly prepared for the heat. Or lacked the tactics required to run in such a big race.
Whatever the reason, Longboat missed the finish of what many historians believe was the most sensational foot race in the history of the modern Olympics.
About half an hour after Long boat went down, Dorando Pietri of Italy staggered into the Great Stadium, fell several times and, at one point, ran off in the wrong direction.
Having been helped back on to his feet several times by British officials, Pietri eventually was almost carried across the finish line. The Italian would be disqualified after a protest by Johnny Hayes of the U.S., who was given the gold medal.
The controversy over the result set off a brief global craze for distance running, with Longboat one of the principal beneficiaries.
After winning a few other races — including a marathon as an amateur — Longboat turned professional by beating Pietri before a sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden in December 1908. For a time, the Canadian was regarded as the best long-distance runner in the world.
But alcoholism soon doomed Longboat’s career.
After returning to England to serve as a dispatch runner for the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the Great War, where he was said to have been wounded twice, he came back to Ontario where he eventually worked on a garbage truck in Toronto before dying penniless in 1949 on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford.
There are few signs left of that epic Olympic marathon today.
The Great Stadium that was the centrepiece of what was known as the White City Olympics was demolished in 1984 to make way for the BBC’s Shepherd’s Bush headquarters.
A plaque not far from the marathon finish lists the medal tally in 1908: Britain ahead of the United States for the first and last time.
Canada was seventh of only 22 countries, winning three gold, three silver and 10 bronze.
Those Games were where the marathon was set at a distance of 26 miles, 586 yards and two feet. This was because Queen Elizabeth’s grandmother, then Princess Mary of Teck, wanted her children to celebrate a birthday by watching the start from their nursery on Windsor’s eastern terrace, while King Edward VII’s wife, Queen Alexandra, wanted the finish line to be in front of the royal box at the Great Stadium.
“The International Olympic Committee said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’” historical guide Simon Rodway recalled during a tour of the area on Tuesday. Thirteen years later, the distance for the race was officially shortened by about 200 metres.
The White City Games had many firsts. They were the first Olympics where a black athlete took part — an American in one of the relay races.
Swimming became an Olympic event in 1908 and was held in the infield of the main stadium.
There was also figure skating, there being no Winter Olympics at the time.
To keep the hosts happy, there was cricket and tug o’ war, which would likely be hugely popular if it was still on the Olympic schedule today, as well as three “running deer” shooting events.
Fret not, though, no real deer were killed. The “deer” were targets that moved along a track.
The last live animals to be killed as part of an Olympic shooting event died eight years earlier at the Paris Games. To decide the winner, about 300 pigeons were slaughtered.
The 1908 Olympics marked the last time the host nation was allowed to provide all the umpires, referees and other arbiters for the various events. This practice ended after bitter American complaints about some dodgy decisions.
“It was called the Battle of Shepherd’s Bush because the Americans and the British squabbled over so many things,” Rodway said. “The British could not understand why the Americans were so competitive. For the British, this was bad form.”
Walking around behind the BBC complex, Rodway revealed one of the last links to the 1908 Games.
A small side road bore the name not of the 1908 marathon’s American winner, Hayes, but that of Pietri, the Italian who was disqualified.
“Dorando’s story had gone around the world like wildfire,” Rodway said.
“The first three modern Games had come and gone without much interest so Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s dream was in trouble. The fiasco with the marathon probably saved the Olympic movement. That’s the real legacy of London’s first Olympics.”