The first Olympics held in America -- in St. Louis in the summer of 1904 -- nearly put an end to the modern games.
Not that the previous Olympic games, held in Paris in 1900, were a paragon of efficiency and virtue. There, the facilities were poor -- there was no flat track for the sprinters, and groves of trees encroached on the hammer- and discus-throwing fields. Marathon runners faced an unfamiliar and complicated course through Paris; the winner, a Parisian, was accused of taking shortcuts. "A slipshod affair," writes William O. Johnson Jr., author of "All That Glitters Is Not Gold."
But the St. Louis games featured some of the most comedic and disgraceful moments in Olympic history. Because transoceanic travel was slow and expensive, only 12 countries were represented. In some events, all the competitors were American; little wonder that American athletes won 238 medals -- 223 more than the second-place Germans.
An American gymnast named George Eyser won six medals, including three gold, despite having a wooden leg. It was "an Olympics best forgotten," Mr. Johnson notes.
Yet it would be unfortunate if the story of prankster-runner Fred Lorz were lost to history.
Mr. Lorz, a resident of New York City, came to St. Louis to run the marathon. So did a Cuban mailman, Felix Carvajal, whose only training was delivering letters on foot around his native island. Mr. Carvajal ran the race in black oxfords with leather soles and heels. In all, 32 men crossed the starting line at about 3 p.m. on Aug. 30 and began the 24.85-mile course.
It was a hot day -- 82 degrees in the shade -- and the runners soon found themselves on unpaved rural roads, where they were preceded and trailed by cars carrying judges, doctors and journalists. The vehicles kicked up so much dust that the competitors choked and sputtered as they jogged. One runner was later hospitalized for dust inhalation.
At the nine-mile mark, Mr. Lorz dropped out of the race and caught a ride back to the stadium, where the marathon had begun. At the 19-mile mark, Mr. Lorz's car overheated and came to a stop. Rather than wait for roadside assistance, a revived Mr. Lorz decided to run the rest of the way. As he loped into the stadium, the crowd began to cheer his victory. Race officials congratulated him, and Mr. Lorz, known as a practical joker, played along. Only when he was on the verge of accepting the gold medal did he admit what had happened.
Meanwhile, back on the track, one of the black South African runners had been chased off course by two large dogs. Mr. Carvajal grabbed some apples from an orchard and was temporarily stalled by stomach cramps. (He eventually finished fourth.)
Thomas Hicks, several miles from the finish, begged to quit, but his handlers coaxed him along with small doses of sulfate of strychnine -- a stimulant for the central nervous system -- mixed with raw egg whites and mouthfuls of brandy. Mr. Hicks won the race, but lost 10 pounds doing it, write David Martin and Roger Gynn, authors of "The Olympic Marathon."
Only 14 of the 32 starters made it to the finish line.
In the 400-meter race, 13 runners were entered in the final, and the track had no lanes. "One can only imagine the chaos," writes David Wallechinsky in "The Complete Book of the Olympics." A first-round winner in boxing was discovered to be using a false name, and the swimming events took place in an asymmetrical lake that made it very difficult to measure distances.
Held in conjunction with the World's Fair and Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the St. Louis Olympics also were the first and last games to feature a separate competition for "uncivilized tribes" -- Pygmies, Sioux, Patagonians -- in what were billed as "Anthropology Days." The events included not only running and throwing, but also pole climbing and a mud fight.
The final report on the World's Fair expressed the organizers' disappointment with the performances of the "savages." Their running was "very poor," javelin throwing was "another disappointment," and the best attempt in the 16-pound shot-put contest "was so ridiculously poor that it astonished all who witnessed it."
In short, the competitors, who had never been taught or trained in any of these events, "proved themselves inferior athletes, greatly overrated," the report concluded.
Pierre de Coubertin, the French baron who resuscitated the Olympic Games in 1896, didn't come to St. Louis. He was appalled when he heard about "Anthropology Days." Such events, he said, "will, of course, lose their appeal when black men, red men and yellow men learn to run, jump and throw, and leave the white men behind them."
Indeed, in the regular games that year, George Poage, running for the Milwaukee Athletic Club, became the first African-American athlete to win a medal in the modern Olympics.
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