On 24 July 1908, the final day of athletics at the Olympics, 100,000 people crammed into the stadium at White City in London to witness the conclusion to the marathon, with estimates putting the number locked outside at up to a million. If this seems an unusual amount of interest in viewing just the final 400 yards, or 0.87%, of what is widely seen now as the least explosive race in the Olympic lineup, it was to be fully justified.

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“It would be no exaggeration,” the New York Times wrote the following day, “to say that the finish of the marathon at the 1908 Olympics in London was the most thrilling athletic event that has occurred since that Marathon race in ancient Greece, where the victor fell at the goal and, with a wave of triumph, died.”

When it came to drama, intrigue and occasional comedy, there was little to beat the early Olympic marathons. The event was created for the first modern Games in 1896, and its habit for creating scandal and legend, which was to reach its apogee that warm summer’s day in London, had been immediately evident – the third-placed finisher in Athens, Spyridon Belokas, was disqualified for travelling part of the course by carriage. In Paris four years later the course markings were so poor that confused athletes could be seen running randomly through most of central Paris; American Arthur Newton finished fifth but insisted that nobody had overtaken him all day, while his compatriot Richard Grant said he had been deliberately run over by a cyclist as he was about to catch up with the leaders. In a blow to fans of nominative determinism an athlete called Champion came second, and one named Fast finished third.

In St Louis in 1904, John Lorz had come home 16 minutes ahead of his nearest rival and soaked up the applause of the crowd and the congratulations of the first lady, Alice Roosevelt, before upon the arrival of the “runner-up” admitting that he had actually retired at the nine-mile mark and travelled most of the remaining distance in a car. He was banned from sport for life (though was allowed to return the following year). In that same race South Africa’s Len Tau, who with John Mashiani in the same event became the first ever black African Olympic athlete, managed to finish ninth despite running barefoot and at one stage being chased a mile off course by a particularly ferocious dog.

That race was held in 35C heat and over a course described by the trainer of the eventual champion, Thomas J Hicks, as “the most difficult a human being was ever asked to run over”. The winner’s performance was assisted, if that is the appropriate word, by regular doses of strychnine (now most commonly used as rat poison), egg whites and brandy, though Hicks is practically carried across the line (not the first time he got a helping hand that day, if this picture is anything to go by).

And that brings us to London, and those 100,000 people crammed into White City Stadium. They included the Daily Mail’s correspondent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – “I do not often do journalistic work, but I was tempted chiefly by the offer of an excellent seat,” he wrote in his autobiography – and Queen Alexandra, who was so excited about the event that she demanded to be involved in both the start and the finish. Not only was she to witness its conclusion in person, but she also sent a telegram whose arrival was to prompt the Princess of Wales to signal the start of the race.

This was originally to take place on a street outside Windsor Castle, but the princess (the current Queen’s grandmother) wanted her children to watch, so the start was moved by a few hundred yards inside the castle grounds, to a point just outside the nursery. That and the desire to place the finish line directly in front of the queen extended the length of the marathon, which had previously been loosely set at between 25 and 26 miles, to 26 miles and 385 yards, which remains the official marathon distance to this day. Those extra 385 yards, though, were to prove extremely important.

The telegram arrived at precisely 2.33pm and the princess launched the 55 athletes along a course crowded with onlookers. In London the swelling crowd was entertained with heats of the 110m hurdles, “catch-as-catch-can” wrestling and diving – the Olympic pool was in the main stadium, just inside the athletics track. And roughly every five minutes, after each mile of the route, the name of the current marathon leader was read out: first Thomas Jack then Jack Price, both Englishmen, then for most of the second half of the race, Charles Hefferon. The South African was still leading at the 24-mile post, which stood outside No28 Railway Cottages, Willesden Junction. As he passed, a rocket went up to signal to those in the stadium that their wait was almost over. But Hefferon was fading, and with two miles to go he was passed by the Italian Dorando Pietri. Inside the stadium, the crowd turned towards the gate and waited for the first sight of the leader.

“We are waiting anxiously, eagerly, with long, turbulent swayings and heavings, which mark the impatience of the multitude,” wrote Conan Doyle. “Through yonder door he must come. Every eye in the great curved bank of humanity is fixed upon the gap. He must be very near now, speeding down the streets between the lines of shouting people. We can hear the growing murmur. Every eye is on the gap. And then at last he came.”

If they were expecting some kind of muscled Adonis, the crowd were in for a shock: Pietri was 5ft 2in, a pastry chef by trade, and looked younger than his 22 years. Conan Doyle describes him as “a little man, a tiny boy-like creature”. Pietri pauses momentarily, as if physically blown backwards by the wall of noise that has suddenly struck him, and then starts to teeter around the track.

“As I entered the stadium the pain in my legs and in my lungs became impossible to bear,” he wrote in the Italian magazine Sport Illustrato seven years later. “It felt like a giant hand was gripping my throat, tighter and tighter. Willpower was irrelevant now. If it hadn’t been so bad I would not have fallen the first time. I got up automatically and launched myself a few more paces forwards. I no longer knew if I was heading towards my goal or away from it. They tell me that I fell another five or six times and that I looked like a man suffering from paralysis, stumbling with tiny steps towards his wheelchair. I don’t remember anything else. My memory stops at the final fall.”

When he first fell Jack Andrew, the clerk of the course – seen in pictures holding a comedy outsized loudhailer – and Dr Michael Bulger of the Irish Amateur Athletic Association and the chief medical officer that day, went to his aid. In doing so they destroyed his chances of success, and they were to be strongly criticised for their actions. Nearly 50 years later, when Andrew’s daughter was sorting through her late father’s effects, she discovered his account of the race.

“As Dorando reached the track he staggered and after a few yards fell. I kept would-be helpers at bay, but Dr Bulger went to his assistance. I warned him that this would entail disqualification, but he replied that although I was in charge of the race, I must obey him. Each time Dorando fell I had to hold his legs while the doctor massaged him to keep his heart beating. Each time he arose we kept our arms in position behind (not touching him) to prevent him falling on his head, and as he reached the tape he fell back on our arms.”

Conan Doyle is strangely moved by the Italian’s bravery. “It is horrible, and yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame,” he wrote. Pietri’s penultimate fall took place a few yards from his seat. “Amid stooping figures and grasping hands I caught a glimpse of the haggard, yellow face, the glazed, expressionless eyes, the long, black hair streaked across the bow. Surely he is done now. He cannot rise again.”

It is at this point that a second athlete enters the stadium. He has the stars and stripes on his chest: an American. This changes everything.

When the American team first arrived at the Olympic stadium for the opening ceremony, they were horrified to discover that amid the forest of flags decorating the roof their own was nowhere to be seen, and far from mollified when organisers explained that they simply couldn’t find one. Sweden, whose flag was also absent, refused to participate in the ceremony at all but though the Americans continued they were to have their revenge: as they paraded before the king their flag-bearer, Ralph Rose (organisers having presumably now found a flag for him to bear), refused to conform to protocol and respectfully dip the flag.

According to Amos Alonzo Stagg, of the American Olympic Council, this inspired considerable animosity – though America’s success in the Games might also have had something to do with it – and the two nations rarely stopped bickering for the remainder of the games. The highlight of this unfortunate episode came in the 400m final, which was contested the day before the marathon by three Americans and a single Briton. Though an American came first, he was judged to have illegally blocked the Brit, Wyndham Halswelle, and disqualified. When the race was re-run John Carpenter’s team-mates refused to have anything to do with it, resulting in the first and so far only walkover victory at an Olympic Games.

With an American victory the only alternative, every man, woman and child in the stadium would have happily picked up Pietri and personally carried him over the line. And that, more or less, is what happened, with the Italian bundled to glory by a posse of Brits.

The American, Johnny Hayes, completed his circuit of the track without drama and promptly lodged an appeal. The Press Association however reported that he himself had received assistance as he entered the stadium and, after finishing third, Hefferon launches an objection against both Pietri and Hayes, though he promised to withdraw it if the Americans similarly withdrew theirs. In the end he withdrew it anyway, the Americans did not and Pietri was disqualified, a measure described by Sport Illustrato as “draconian and pitiless”. Jubilant Americans carried their man around the stadium on a table. “Wasn’t it great,” the US team manager, Mat Halpin, said. “We can forget what has gone before, although we will always feel that we have been unfairly treated.”

Queen Alexandra, who when Pietri was first declared the winner had been so delighted she “beat a tattoo on the floor of the stand unrestrainedly with her umbrella”, insisted that the Italian should get some reward for his efforts, and during the closing ceremony presented him with a small silver cup. “When I was called to see Her Majesty I was trembling all over,” he said. “I felt as if I should fall as I did in the race. Then she spoke to me very kindly. ‘Bravo’ was the only word I could understand, but I knew what she meant by her smile. This cup is balm to my soul. I shall treasure it to the end of my life.”

“The cheering knew no bounds,” reported The Guardian. “He went as he had come, not with the other competitors, but alone. Behind him he left in the hearts of all spectators an imperishable impression – the impression of a solitary hero, to whom they would have liked to award the palm of victory, and for whom they made a scene of rare and remarkable enthusiasm.”

Pietri is also said to have indulged in some mid-race strychnine, but blamed his failure to complete the race on eating too much steak for breakfast. The extent to which sports nutrition has changed in the past century can be seen from the testimony of Joseph Forshaw, who won the bronze medal (having, incidentally, soaked his socks in beef fat to aid comfort). “We followed the plan adopted at previous marathon races, eating a good breakfast of steak, following this with two raw eggs, some tea and toast,” he said. “On the way we took nothing but water, except four miles from the finish, having a stitch in the side, I took a drop of brandy. Ordinarily I don’t believe in drinking spirits, but I had to do something as the side was giving me trouble.”

Pietri, despite speaking not a word of English, is immediately signed up by an enterprising promoter and sent on a tour of London music halls. Doyle starts a collection among readers of the Daily Mail that raises £300. When he finally leaves, two weeks after the marathon, a crowd gathers at Charing Cross station to see him off, and another awaits in Turin to welcome him home, where he was presented with another cup.

Life would never be the same for Pietri. Though his athletics career was not helped when, within three weeks of his return, the great Italian wrestler Giovanni Ralcevich accidentally knocked him from his bicycle, breaking a leg.

Two months later he boards a boat from Southampton to New York, where he has been challenged to a rematch with Hayes at Madison Square Gardens. He had, he said, “done absolutely no training since the day of the marathon” and had unsuccessfully asked for a delay “to give me an opportunity for some real training”. It was a very different occasion, run over 262 laps of an indoor track in an atmosphere heavy with dust and tobacco smoke, but was no less popular than the first: 20,000 fans fill the stadium, with 10,000 left disappointed outside. In what the New York Times described as “the most spectacular foot race that New York ever has witnessed”, Pietri won by half a lap, and again, more convincingly still, in a second rematch held the following March.

His fame was such that he inspired a young man in New York to pen his very first complete song, about an Italian man who sells his barber shop and bets the proceeds on Pietri winning a race. “He run-a, run-a, run like anything/One-a, two-a hundred times around da ring/I cry, ‘Please-a nunga stop!”/Just then Dorando he’s a drop/Goodbye poor old barber shop”. The man is paid $25 for the song, but goes on to do better with others such as White Christmas and There’s No Business Like Show Business. His name is Irving Berlin.

Pietri raced for the last time in Gothenburg in October 1911, by which time he had run 46 races in three years of professionalism, earning some £200,000. He opened a hotel with his brother in his native Carpi, and later moved to San Remo and opened a garage. In 1942, aged 56, he died.

In 1948, when the Games returned to London, the Evening News published an interview with Pietri. He was, they reported, now 65 and running a pub in Birmingham which had been called The Temperance, but had just been renamed Cafe Dorando. This news astonished and outraged residents of Carpi, who sent a four-man team led by the mayor to investigate the claims. They found that the bar owner had no trophies, no passport and could not even understand their dialect. His name, it turned out, was Peter Palleschi, from Calamecca near Pistoia. He was jailed for fraud.

They still haven’t forgotten him in Carpi, and four years ago, on the centenary of his most famous moment, a giant statue was unveiled in the town centre. The statue is called Dorando the Winner. “Though it’s true that I lost the race I won in fame, and started along a road that has taken me a very long way,” he wrote. “My current life is so happy that the race seems to me like divine providence.”

What the Guardian said

Saturday, July 25, 1908

The Marathon race of the Olympic Games was won yesterday by J.J. Hayes from the United States. The race was from Windsor Castle to the Stadium - a distance of 25 miles 385 yards. Fifty-five runners started, representing sixteen nations. It was 2.30 in the afternoon and the heat was great.

The first man to enter the Stadium was P. Dorando of Italy. Falling four times as he made the circuit of the track, he was helped along by friends, and reached the tape first. Hayes, who was about 80 yards behind Dorando, finished second and C. Hefferon, South Africa, was third. A protest against Dorando on the ground his having received help was upheld by the judges, who awarded the race to Hayes. Hayes did the distance in 2hrs. 55min. 18 2-5sec.

A rumour got about last night that Dorando had died from the effects of the terrible strain of the race. This was untrue. Though Durando was obviously in the greatest distress in the Stadium, he had sufficiently recovered by nine o’clock last night to walk out from the Stadium grounds to a motor-cab and be driven to his lodgings. Hayes also went away early in the evening, and, so far as is known, the other competitors have not suffered any serious effects.

At the dinner which was last night given by the British Government to the representatives of foreign countries taking part in the Olympic Games, and at which Sir Edward Grey was present, Lord Desborough said he wished to announce that the Queen would be pleased if the Italian representative would accept from her personally a cup in honour of the practical though not de facto victory of Dorando that day. The Queen wished to show her appreciation of the splendid running of the Italian by giving him personally a cup.

After all our high hopes that England was the land of the long-distance runner, we have still to win the marathon race. Our failure to do so at the former races was believed to be due to the fact that we were unable to be represented properly, but when the struggle was to be over our own roads many of us thought it was as good as won. As it happened, we were beaten by our own weather as well as 12 of our opponents. The little Italian Dorando, who stumbled round the tape after receiving help from his friend (which opened the unhappy business of protests), seemed, until the last mile, least of all to feel the heat. But the South African Hefferon, the Amercan Hayes, and even the Swede Svanberg were all much less distressed than the Englishmen. The success of the Americans, who had three men in the first five, however much they may supposed to revel in the hot weather, calls for another revision of our ideas about the athletic resources of that inexhaustible country. The finish of the contest, with its pitiable and dramatic incidents, will give the Marathon race a place by itself in the history of our sports, tinging it with something of the grimness of its origin...

News of the start at Windsor came to swarms of Londoners as they took their way to Paddington and Baker-street Stations to catch the race on the outskirts. The Prince of Wales had fired the electric gun, and the Crown Prince of Sweden had started off the field of 55 runners, these including the Canadian Indian Longboat, whose entry had been so severely opposed. Duncan, the Salford Harrier, who was favourite for the cup, had got off easily, and the running was being made by Clarke and Lord. All the places on the route where the train touched were buzzing with people. The City must have been half empty, the City man and his clerk were here in their tens of thousands, and there were huge clusters of Americans and foreigners with flags to betray them. There were few Frenchman for the nation was not competing. The heat seemed to be getting worse after two o’clock, and it was felt that whatever might be done no records would be broken near the half way post .... A programme somewhat deficient in interest had been arranged to occupy the earlier part of the afternoon at the Stadium before the Marathon race was timed to finish. The crowd, estimated at 70,000 at least, bore it in great patience, and even raised a little interest in high diving and pole jumping. But it was evident that the idea of a thrilling finish to the great race had caught the popular imagination. The heat of the blazing summer day had brought colour to the tiers of seats surrounding the arena. On the sunny side were rows of sunshades of every conceivable hue, and one could not help contrasting the scene with that of last week, when a handful of spectators had herded together under dripping umbrellas. Now they waved fans improvised from newspapers, and seemed uncomfortably hot at that.

The Stadium looked full at three o’clock, with streams of people steadily pouring up the gangway and finding room somewhere. The earliest moment at which the Marathon winner could could be looked for was five, so for two hours the spectators had to make the best of what the programme offered. They had the pleasure of seeing the Americans carry off every single heat of the 110 metres hurdle race and cheered so heartily that it was plain they bore no malice...

At length rumour, with one wild swan song of inaccuracy, had done with us, and in tense and painful silence the onlookers awaited the arrival of the first men. The gangway was clear. It looked as though the winner had only to burst through, run round a section of the track, and burst the tape, a little exhausted, perhaps, at the foot of the Royal stand. It was, however, a very different thing that actually happened. Over the cycle track came a string of officials, who stood aside. Then a gaunt, bony figure struggled through. His head was bound up in a handkerchief. Through the glasses, one could see his face, half dreamy, half frantic. It was easy to see that the man was almost delirious. He staggered across the cement track and was pushed in the direction he was required to go. He had run so far he lifted his legs mechanically and as he lifted them friendly hands gave him a push, so that he made some progress. Dimly at the back of his mind he seemed to know that he was wanted to run, and he went through the necessary motions.

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So Dorando progressed along the track till he came to a bend, where he fell. Willing hands – they were too willing - raised him and pushed him on again, but he collapsed once more. It looked as though exhortations to courage were being whispered to him, and they had the effect of rousing him to energies of which he was not truly capable. A crowd surged round him as he collapsed once more, and policemen were called onto the scene to keep it back, while the truly unfortunate man was put upon his feet and pushed once more towards the goal.

Five times in all did Dorando collapse in the short quarter of a mile that lay between the gate and home; and at the last, as he lay on the ground, only twenty-five yards to the tape, Hayes, the American, entered the course. Overcome as he was, the Italian seemed to understand the importance of the news; he staggered once more to his feet and was half carried, half propelled, to the finish, where he collapsed utterly. Hayes came along on his own legs, but did not arrive soon enough to catch the first cheer of the crowd, which spent the first of its enthusiasm on the Italian. And on the flagstaff the Italian flag fluttered, with the American just below it.

To the shouting spectators the finish was a marvellous spectacle of endurance under adversity. A man must run his own race, however, and if he falls by the wayside his supporters may succour him, but they may not propel him. It was obvious in their saner moments to many who had helped the Italian to finish that they were thereby utterly ruining his chances of any place at all in the race. As a result of this scene, which ought never to have happened, Hayes, the American, entered a protest, which was upheld by the judges and he was awarded the race.