The 1904 Olympic Marathon was a disaster, and I’m here to tell you about it. Welcome back to Cold Case Mysteries with Rohith Koneru where I talk about everything other than cold case mysteries. In this episode, we are talking about the 1904 St. Louis Olympic Marathon, a race that included fraud, rat poison, feral dogs, and multiple instances of near-death. Let’s get into it.

The course of the race looked like this, the runners would run a few laps around the track at Francis Field, then run along a bunch of streets in suburban St. Louis, and finally come back to Francis Field to finish the race. To take into context how bad this marathon was, out of all 1421 Olympic marathon runners from every Olympic Games, the winner of this 1904 marathon ranks 1398 out of 1421, which is the 2nd percentile. Out of the 41 runners that registered to race in the marathon, only 14 finished. Oh no.

Boston Marathon champion John Lorden was one the favorites to win this race. He made it two blocks before vomiting profusely and dropping out. 

There are many reasons why this marathon went so terribly, so ill list a few:

• It was very hot outside. The ideal marathon temperature is 45 degrees. On that day in St. Louis, it was over 100 degrees outside.
• There was only one water source on the entire track, ONE. It was 12 miles into the race. Even worse, many athletes suffered intestinal problems from drinking the water.
• The running path was mainly dirt roads. This would be fine, but race officials were driving cars all over the path, which kicked up dust. This caused some runners to swallow so much dust that their stomach membrane rubbed off, like William Garcia, who was found 19 miles into the race coughing up blood on the street. He almost bled to death
• There were a lot of feral dogs. One competitor got chased off course by a mile. He finished 9th.

One racer went by the name Felix Carvajal. A mailman hailing from the great country of Cuba, Carvajal raised money by running across the entirety of Cuba in order to sail to America. He then stowed away on trains all the way to St. Louis, where he finally showed up to the race. All of the other competitors were wearing normal attire, short sleeves, shorts, and athletic shoes. My man Felix was wearing long johns, heavy shorts, long sleeves, and dress shoes. It was 100 degrees outside. He is about to run 26 miles. Felix was broke so the stole some peaches and ate them as he was racing. He was doing pretty well until he stole some apples from an orchard which turned out to be rotten. He got a stomach ache and took a nap on the sidewalk. After some time, he woke up and just started running again. He finished 4th. FOURTH? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Felix wasn’t even invited to the race, he just showed up.

Fred Lorz was fast out the blocks but is now falling behind due to cramps. He eventually throws in the towel and gets in a car to go back home. At the 16-mile mark, Thomas Hicks has built a considerable lead but is starting the fall victim to cramps as well. He begs his trainer for water, but he won’t give it to him. Instead of water, he feeds him egg whites and rat poison. Smart guy. Meanwhile, on his car ride home, the car Fred Lorz is in breaks down, so he decided to start running again just for fun. At 20 miles, Thomas Hicks is falling apart even more. In response to this, his trainer gives him more egg whites, more rat poison, and BRANDY. While this is happening, Fred Lorz strolls past Hicks looking full of energy and unfazed by the conditions. Without knowing that Lorz already dropped out of the race, Hicks is crushed. Hicks eventually finds out that Lorz is out of the race and keeps going, but he is not in the best condition. He finished his bottle of brandy, so a bystander gives him another bottle. After a couple miles, race officials and his trainer are practically carrying Hicks, but they still refuse to give him water. However Hicks pulls through and as he enters the stadium, he sees the organizers present the trophy to FRED LORZ. After finishing, Hicks was driven to the hospital immediately, he probably never ran in a marathon again.

In the end, Fred Lorz admitted to cheating, and Thomas Hicks was awarded first place, but I dont think he really cared. And that is the story of the 1904 St. Louis Marathon.

Sources:

https://youtu.be/M4AhABManTw 

What’s up fellas, I just came across the best online argument that has ever taken place. Also, I have completely abandoned the cold case mystery thing. This argument took place in a 2007 bodybuilding forum on Bodybuilding.com, and it has been forever immortalized as the greatest, most intelligent debate ever held. 

The adventure starts with an unassuming question from an innocent user which reads,

This is a great question by this random guy, he is just wondering if he can do full body workouts every other day without getting hurt (you can). The same guy then makes another post,

Soooo, if you go to the gym every other day for a week, you will go 5 days a week? Yea, just did the math and it checks out. Everything was going well until somebody called out this innocent user, saying

This also makes sense, if you divide 7 by 2, you get 3.5. This guy clearly went to school. However, one of our protagonists, Josh, answers back.

Josh also has a point, if you go to the gym every other day starting from Monday, you will go four days. Also, you can’t have a half workout, right? Well, our other protagonist, Justin, has an answer for us. He says,

Here we see that Justin uses a technique called long division. He divides 7 by 2 and gets a remainder of 1, then brings down a zero, inserts a decimal point into the answer, and finishes it off by dividing 10 by 2, which leaves him with the answer of 3.5. Very sophisticated stuff going on here. However, Josh is unfazed by Justin’s logic, he responds,

From my calculations, Josh is also correct. With the long division method, dividing 8 by 2 gives you 4 times a week. Maybe Justin is all muscle and no brains. Josh seems to have won the debate, but Stevie comes out of nowhere and says,

Stevie really hit Josh with the “Grow up and admit when you are wrong. Believe me you will get a a lot further in life this way.” GAME OVER. Pysch, Josh responds,

While we don’t have the image of Josh’s calendar, you can image that it was a calendar with 15 days on it, which means Josh is right, 2 weeks is 15 days which means Josh didn’t double count Sunday. Justin responds,

Justin claims that 15 days does not equal 14 days, and sprinkles a lil Spanish on top to add insult to injury. Josh fires back,

He claims you don’t count the first day, which probably makes sense. So Josh wins? NO, Justin returns fire,

Justin believes he has to spell it out for Josh, but Josh responds with,

Josh uses credible evidence from a primary source and includes an annotated bibliography. Justin replies,

Justin is clearly getting angry which means he is losing the debate. Justin goes to far by insulting Josh’s public schools, wow. Now I will be here forever if I show every post between our two protagonists because there are hundreds, but they basically go back and forth calling each other names, throwing insults at each other, and debating whether a week is from Sunday-Sunday or Saturday-Saturday. This goes on until Josh suddenly goes offline. He doesn’t post for a while and Justin starts going on a victory tour. Justin calls Josh a moron and a variety of words I can’t write, but it seems lost for Josh. Even other people who weren’t even involved in the argument chime in and start shaming Josh. Where is our hero and when is he coming back? Justin continues to build an army of cronies to rally against Josh, but Josh hasn’t posted in hours. Keep in mind this thread has been going on for days now. Soon, Justin goes to bed as well and more people start having the same debate all over again, but we don’t care about some irrelevant fools, we just want to know where Josh went. Some random says,

HELL NO, NO NO NO. There is absolutely no way we are stopping this now, this guy should be banished from Earth and sent to the moon with a perfect living environment so he can live the rest of his life in solitude as he grows weak due to the moon’s lower gravity. However, when morning hits, Justin is back at it again. The reign over the forum is getting to his head as he says things like, ” I know I’m college educated and far smarter than those around me”. You can clearly tell that Justin doesn’t win a lot in life because his head is in outer space. However, an entire day since his last post, the eking returns to his throne with this response,

Josh plays it cool, which is what I would do in this situation. If you act like you don’t care after making your opp fully invested, it is a brutal blow, and it clearly affected Justin,

Justin has clearly lost his mind, he has snorted too much dry-erase marker and now he can only see Martians, someone please help him! NO, Josh is ruthless, he has no mercy, he hits Justin with the finishing blow,

This post marks the noticeable end of the debate, and for good reason. Josh crafted this response with no regard for human life, it makes me feel kind of bad for Justin. While I do think that Josh wasn’t trolling, the fact that I was rooting against Justin the entire time made this ending so much better. And the cherry on top, Josh pretty much tricked Justin into writing a 3000-word paper on working out every other day. Long Live king Josh

SOURCES::

https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=107926751&page=4