A small man in a white shirt, red shorts and uncomfortable looking black shoes hovers among the tourists outside Windsor Castle. He’s also sporting the number 19 on his chest, a natty moustache and a knotted handkerchief on his head, like an escapee from a seaside postcard.
He’s a young actor hired for the day to be Dorando Pietri, the Italian baker who won the 1908 Olympic Marathon in London only to be disqualified because after entering the White City Stadium, he collapsed five times and was helped up by umpires before he could wobble over the line. In the stands was the Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, moonlighting as a big name sports reporter for the Daily Mail, where he detailed his awe of Pietri’s thwarted efforts: ‘He has gone to the extreme of human endurance… It is horrible, and yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.’
Public sympathy for the athlete was so great that King Edward VII’s wife Queen Alexandra gave him a special cup, Irving Berlin was inspired to compose a song called ‘Dorando’, and Mail readers raised £300 (a tidy sum back then) to help him to open his own business back home. But if people remember one thing about the 1908 Olympics today, it probably isn’t the name of its greatest runner.
Nor is it the fact that the nation of Bohemia won two bronze medals, or that the event programme included demonstrations of Nordic folk wrestling and pistol dueling, or that the whole thing would have taken place in Italy if it hadn’t been for the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius (but you can have those for your next pub quiz). No, what everyone knows about the 1908 Olympic Marathon is that it’s the reason the standard distance became an extremely random 26 miles and 385 yards.
The first marathon of the modern Olympics, in Athens in 1896, was 24.8 miles long. The venerable Boston Marathon, which was first run in 1897, only became a strict 26.2 miles in 1924. If the official distance had stayed a bit shorter, we wouldn’t have had to wait so long for the sub-2 hour record.
It’s Britain’s royal family who get the blame for the lengthening, because this race started in a private part of the Windsor Castle grounds, watched by the King and Queen’s children, and finished below the royal box in the specially built White City Stadium in west London.
The Castle is still there, obviously, but the stadium isn’t. That hasn’t stopped the people behind Original Marathon from trying to recreate the race for an inaugural rerun in 2024. Their commitment to historical accuracy leads to some fun details: as in the real race, they only accept 75 entrants. My number, 63, corresponds to a British runner, William Clarke, who was one of just 27 who actually finished the 1908 event. We cross the original finish line at the end, still preserved in the pavement within a shiny new business park, and the medal is a gorgeous chunky nugget in a red presentation box.
Of course if they wanted to maintain true authenticity they would have forbidden women from entering and made us men run in stiff plimsolls, so we can be grateful for a few modern developments. I was less thankful for the outer London of 2024, whose newer road layouts meant that this recreation of the race that gave us the 26.2 marathon distance was actually closer to 27.5 miles long.
The roads aren’t closed for such a small number of runners, so nobody gets a PB when they have to wait at pedestrian crossings, dodge the bus queues of Wembley and negotiate warrens of tunnels beneath vast modern roundabouts. Nor have London’s vigorous city planners left us with much to evoke the spirit of the early 20th Century. There’s a weathered sign on a wall in Eton that says “Marathon route 25 miles/40.2 kilos”, but once we hit the blocky shopping precinct of Slough it’s doubtful there are even any trees that witnessed Pietri or the official winner, American Johnny Hayes, whizzing by.
I wonder what those men would have made of all the traffic, often moving slower than us runners, of the rainbow of ethicities on the streets of Uxbridge, Ruislip and Harlesden, of space age inventions such as e-scooters and M&S Simply Food. While the modern London Marathon provides photo opportunities at Canary Wharf, Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace, this one now has Wormwood Scrubs and the North Circular.
In another neat touch, the results list is mixed together with the results from 1908. I would have come 26th apparently, beating only four of the original competitors. But hey, I ran a mile and a half further, and as this historic race made clear, distances are very important.
https://www.originalmarathon.com
BOXOUT: 3 OTHER RACES THAT RETRACE HISTORY
15 June 2024
Pretend you are a Roman centurion daring to face up to the scary Caledonians further north as you run or trek the 70 miles along Hadrian’s Wall.
7 Sept 2024
These Highland Games in the Cairngorms can be traced back 900 years to King Malcolm Canmore’s time. They include a 3-mile hill race that climbs 1,200 feet.
28-29 Sept 2024
The original marathon distance is designed to replicate the ancient Greek messenger Pheidippides’s supposed run from the city of Marathon to Athens, but he’s also meant to have run from Athens to Sparta. This ultramarathon recreates that epic journey – a terrifying 153 miles.
