The Illustrious Boston Marathon 1897-1975 – A History of the Marathon Race — 490 B.C. to 1975* – by John Apostal Lucas – *Originally printed in: The Amateur Athlete, 28 (November 1957), 10-13. – Part III.

The Illustrious Boston Marathon 1897-1975
J. J. McDermott won the first Boston Athletic Association Marathon race on April 19, 1897, in 2:55:10. AAU chief, James E. Sullivan, recalled that the fifteen starters “were at that time considered fit candidates for an insane asylum at the idea of running twenty-five miles.”39 Senior sports editor of The Boston Globe, Jerry Nason, has documented in capsule form every winner’s performance from that first year through the 1965 record run of Japan’s Morio Shigematsu (2:16:33).

40 Famous and colorful names and events are found in this classic event. Drama and pathos, a whole range of human emotions and experiences are wrapped up in this marathon—second only to the Olympic race. For example, in 1907 the talented nineteen-year-old Onondago Indian, Tom Longboat, elected to sprint through South Farmingham—only six miles into the race. It was a wise move as he had just managed to get past a railroad grade crossing as a long freight rolled by. The rest of the field was “log-jammed for two minutes.” Longboat won by 3 ½ minutes. Clarence H. DeMar won the 1911 classic, and won again six more times.

The 1923 race, won by DeMar, was the last at the shorter 25 mile distance. DeMar promptly won the 1924 version over a 26 mile, 209 yard course, and a 26 mile 385 yard course in 1927. Leslie Pawson in ‘33, ‘38, and ‘41, John A. Kelly in ‘35 and ‘45, Ellison “Tarzan” Brown in ‘36, and Gerard Cote in ‘40, ‘43, ‘44, and 1948, were several of the great pre and post war winners.

The foreign “invasion” began earnestly in 1946 with Stylianos Kyriakides, Yun Bok Suh in ‘47, Leanderson in ‘49, several Koreans, many Japanese, a Guatemalan, and an army of Finns. Anti Viskari won in 1956 (2:14:14), his countryman, Oksanen (2:17:56) was third. Two brilliant Americans, John “The Younger” Kelley (2:14:33) and Nick Costes (2:18:01) were second and fourth. Road re-measurements found the course 1183 yards short; it was lengthened and the meteoric Kelley promptly won the ‘57 classic in 2:20:05. Mihalic of Yugoslavia took the 1958 prize in 2:25:54; Oksanen returned to win the ‘59, ‘61, and 1962 races—all in fast times. Paavo Kotila, another Finn, won a 2:20:54 race in 1960, Belgium’s Vandendriessche in 1963 and 1964 (2:18:58/2:19:59). Morio Sigematsu led an awesome Japanese sweep of 1-2-3-5-6 places; his 2:16:33 was a record in 1965.

In nearly unbelievable precision, Japanese marathoners took first through fourth places in the 1966 Boston classic—Kenjii Kimihara (2:17:11) only seconds ahead of the other three. In 1967, Dave McKenzie of New Zealand had to run a fast 2:15:45 to beat New York City’s Tom Laris by a minute. This was also the year of the “mysterious entry,” “K. Switzer of Syra-cuse.” Kathy—the first known woman to run the race—had great difficulty with officials, made national headlines, and was a portent of the direction the marathon race would take. Sur-prising and popular was the 1968 victory of Wesleyan senior, Ambrose J. Burfoot (2:22:17).

Hiroshima’s Unetani lay to rest the notion of any other country but Japan as the world’s greatest marathoning specialists during the 1960s. His 2:13:49 in 1969 was a record. Significant was the “mass marathon” syndrome, as 1152 men (and a few women not officially included) chose the protracted difficulties, challenges, and satisfactions of a twenty-six miler. Ron Hill of England, 31-year-old chemist and world champion, parlayed a scientifically harsh training pro-gram with a cool, moist, wind-blown day to win the 1970 race in a breath-taking 2:10:30—the second person in history to average under five minutes a mile. Eamon O’Reilly of the U.S.A. flew 2:11:12 in second place.

Alvero Mejia of Columbia (2:18:45) beat Pat McMahon by only five seconds in 1971, while youthful Olavi Suomalainen of Finland took the 1972 prize in 2:15:39. Jon Anderson of Eugene, Oregon, ran an intelligent and courageous 2:16:03 in 1973; another American college student, Neil Cusak of Ireland, won the ‘74 race in 2:13:39. He had to run fast to beat the very strong Tom Fleming (2:14:25). Marathon fever was spreading rapid-ly, and despite time restrictions put on the race, 1705 men and 36 women officially ran that year’s Boston marathon.

Back in December of 1967, towering 6’ 2”, 160 pound, Irish-born Australian, Derek Clayton, became the first person to run a full 26 mile 385 yard marathon in under 130 minutes—a seemingly impossible task. He won the prestige Fukuoka Marathon in 2:09:36. A year later, “this massive muscleman” ran to a 2:08:33 all-time clocking at Antwerp in May of 1969.41 Few would have thought that William “Bill” Rodgers of Wesleyan University and Boston College would join this charmed circle even though he had won several major road races that spring—and in outstanding time. Cool weather and a signifi-cant 20 mph helpful breeze conspired to keep the 1975 marathon leaders from running ordinary times through the various check points. “At 10 miles I knew it was too fast. At 17 miles I was convinced of it,” said the free-spirited winner. He plunged onward, through fatigue barriers, never sure for a moment that he would finish, let alone win. “When I heard the time [2:09:55] I didn’t believe it. I still don’t. It’s a dream,” blinked the unfettered 27-year-old.42

Liane Winter of Wolfsburg, Germany ran 2:42:33—an incredible world’s record for women. It was a day for records; 49 women entered the race while “in excess of 2000 men,” raced, ran, jogged, and plodded from Hopkington to the Prudential Center in Copley Square, Boston. Steve Hoag ran 2:11:54, Tom Fleming (2:12:05), Tom Howard (2:13:23), Ron Hill (2:13:28) and fifty more remained under 2:25. “There’s no athletic event like it,” said Johnny Kelley, 1957 winner. His 2:34:11 was good for 167th place. Kelly, Sr. (no relation), 68 years, was in his 99th marathon, Keizo Yamada of Japan, winner of this same B.A.A. race twenty-two years earlier, raced 2:34:54, and, nearly beyond comprehension, Bob Hall pushed a wheelchair all the way in 2:58!

The Present Status of the Sport

The “Marathon Craze” of 1908-1912 that swept the Continent and North America43 was confined to a handful of professional long-distance runners. This small fraternity of marathon artisans bears little resemblance to the army of running zealots, the thousands of marathon devotees in America and Europe today. “Runner’s World noted that in 1968 there were 38 marathons held in the U. S.; in 1974, there were 135.”44 The nature of running 26 miles without stopping and its mass popularity makes the effort one fraught with hazards. As long ago as 1948, correspondent Willy Meisel held the view that the marathon race “fathered by a sentimental classical scholar, and nursed by headline-hungry journalists, should never have been introduced into athletic contests.”45

There is some truth here, yet the fascination and challenge remains for in-creasing numbers, and with long, loving, and correct physical preparation, a surprisingly wide range of people may aspire to and succeed in running “forty kilometers and then some.”

Encapsulated in this 2-5 hour run are an astonishing variety of individual experiences. The agonistic struggle, self-fulfill-ment, progress toward fitness, recovery from illness, and the search for beauty through both pain and pleasure are all valid reasons given by men and women. Pain is an absolutely integral part of a marathon runner’s endeavor. And yet, as Francis W. Keenan, sport philosopher, says, “Even painful experience, both physical and mental, can be beautiful. When the distaste-ful can be perceived as a means for further development and cultivating an experience, it may be viewed as aesthetic and enjoyable.”46 Jonah

J. “Bud” Greenspan, author and television producer, asked a recent Boston Marathon finisher why he had run the torturous 26 mile 385 yard distance without hope of victory. “Man,” said the nineteen-year-old, “I finished!”47 A. E. H. Winter, in his history of England’s Poly Marathon race, is convinced that, for a few, it is an attempt at im-mortality. “And Hope is still the answer that Encouragement has given to us,” he concludes. “The Hope that men will con-tinue to come in peace, inspired only by a simple wish—to see their names engraved upon a silver statue forever.”48

A plethora of marathon races take place in most parts of the world—and this does not include the feats of informal, non-competitive wonders from East Africa, the Japanese salt-flat runner-peasants, and those tireless joggers, the Taramahua In-dians. Institutionalized marathon races exist today in all parts of the world and on all continents. The rationale ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime. “Real-life Walter Mitty success stories,” said one writer in attempting to evaluate the accumu-lated fortitude he had witnessed in a single marathon race.49 One sports writer pointed out that most Boston runners will arrive early “because this is important, because this probably is the biggest day of his entire year.”50

George Sheehan, re-markable runner, physician, philosopher, sees the race as a form of physical, but especially spiritual endurance. The marathon is a microcosm of life, he says.

The marathoner can experience the drama of everyday existence so evident to the artist and poet. For him all emotions are heightened.…  I believe every human must have this capacity [to endure] and could find it if he tried. And there is no better place to discover it than a marathon. For the truth is that every man in a marathon is a survivor or nothing, including the winner.…  I do not intend to pause, or rest, or rust. Descendants of Ulysses… I will survive.51

Clarence DeMar, grandest old man of the sport, and marathon marvel, put it just as eloquently, no less honestly, and just as ac-curately, when he told Boston Herald columnist, Bill Cunningham, that training for and running in marathons “is no cheap and passing emotion.”

It’s a supreme feeling of perfection and closeness to the Infinite I can’t express very well.…  To me it’s more than a race. It’s a very personal thing—a sense of supreme well being.52

NOTES

1 Homer, The Iliad,  trans. by W. H. D. Rouse (New York: A Mentor Book published by the New Ameri-can Library, 1938), pp. 265-282.
2 Herodotus, The Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 501-502.
3_____________, The Histories, trans. by Aubrey de Selincourt (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1966), p. 397.
4 Ibid., p. 398.
5 Herodotus, The Histories, trans. by A. D. Godley, Vol. 3 (London: William Heinemann, 1928), p. 275.
6 Isocrates, trans. by George Norlin, Vol. 1 (London:  William Heinemann, Ltd., 1928), pp. 171, 173.
7 N. G.  L. Hammond, “The Campaign and the Battle of Marathon,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 88  (1968),  pp. 13-57.
8 Lucian, trans. by K. Kilburn, Vol. 6 (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 177. Classicists identify this passage of Lucian (Prolapsu 3) as “A Slip of the tongue in greeting” by Lucian.
9 Pliny, Natural History, trans. by H. Rackham, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1943), p. 561.
10 Plutarch, Moralia, trans. by Frank Cole Babbit, Vol. 4 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 503, 505.
11 H. A. Harris, Greek Athletes and Athletics (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1976), p. 76.
12 E. Norman Gardiner, Athletics of the Ancient World (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 140.
13 Victor Ehrenberg, From Solon to Socrates (London:  Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1968), p. 412 ftn.
14 Joseph Ward Swain, The Ancient World, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Bros., 1950). p. 379.
15 “Pheidippides,” The Times (London), July 28, 1908, p. 10.
16 Ibid.
17 “The Birth of a Legend,” The Nation, 88 (May 27, 1909), p. 533.
18 “The Original Marathon Runner,” The Nation, 88  (June 3, 1909), p. 559.
19 “A Retreat from Marathon,” The Nation, 88 (June 17, 1909), p.602.
20 See Francis G. Allinson, “The Original ‘Marathon Runner’,” The Classical Weekly, 24 (March 16, 1931), 152; also his Greek Lands and Letters (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1931), pp. 138-159.
21 “Lord Byron: Don Juan,” T. G. Steffan and W. W. Pratt (editors). Vol. 2 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1957), p. 312.
22 ____________, Childe Harold (London: George Bell and Sons, 1893), Second Canto, p. 139.
23 Robert Browning, “Pheidippides,” in The Complete Works of Robert Browning, edited by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clark, Vol. 2 (New York: George D. Sproul, 1898), pp. 117-124.
24 Alice E. Hanscom, “The Mound at Marathon,” Chautauquan, 31 (September, 1900), p. 625.
25 Fred Jacob, “The Marathon,” St. Nicholas, 40 (November, 1912), 52-55.
26 Sir Francis H. Doyle in M. A. Hamilton, Greece, A Short History (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1926), p. 61.
27 Alan Lloyd, Marathon (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 47.
28 See G. W. Botsford and E. G. Sihler (editors) Hellenic Civilization (New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1965), p. 200.
29 See Harold H. Hart, Physical Feats that Made History (New York:  Hart Publishing Co., 1974), pp. 332-333.
30 See “Track Finds A Prospect in the Bush,” New York Times, March 22, 1975,Sports Section, p. 6.
31 “Becoming Classic,” Stamford Advocate, August 27, 1896.
32 “Great Athletic Records,” The New York Times, September 20, 1896, p. 6.
33 Bill Henry, An Approved History of the Olympic Games (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1948), p. 34.
34 Pierre de Coubertin, Memoires Olympique (Lausanne: Bureau International de Pedagogic Sportive, 1931), p. 40.
35 See Eva Foldes, “Women at the Olympics,” International Olympic Academy Proceedings 1964, pp. 112-113.
36 John Hopkins, The Marathon (London: Stanley Paul, 1966).
37 See “The Marathon Race” in The Fourth Olympiad London 1908 Official Report, Theodore Andrea Cook (ed.) (London: The British Olympic Association, 1909), pp. 68-84.
38 “Dorando’s Departure,” (London) The Times, August 10, 1908, p. 4.
39 James E. Sullivan, Marathon Running (New York:  American Sports Pub. Co., 1909), p.  101.
40 Jerry Nason, The Story of the Boston Marathon (Boston: The Boston Globe, 1965).
41 “Briton Shatters Marathon Record,” The Boston Globe, April 21, 1970, p. 1; also Dave Prokop, “Derek Clayton,” Runner’s World, 6 (January 1971), 14-20. The Antwerp course may have been short.
42 “Will” Rodgers in John Ahern, “Win, Record Surprised Rodgers, Too,” The Boston Evening Globe, April 22, 1975, p. 37.
43 See John Lucas, “The Professional Marathon Craze in America, 1908-1909,” U. S. Track Coaches Quarterly Review (December 1968), 31-36.
44 Track and Field News, 28 (June 1975), p. 43.
45 Willy Meisel, “The Birth of the Marathon,” World Sport (1948), p. 16.
46 Francis W. Keenan, “The Athletic Contest as a ‘Tragic’ Form of Art,” International Review of Sport Sociology, 10 (1975), p. 40.
47 Bud Greenspan, “The Marathon,” The Olympian, 1 (February 1975), p. 13.
48 A. E. H. Winter, From the legend to the Living (n.p., 1969), p. 40.
49 Barry Stavro, “26 Miles—One Step at a Time,” Yankee Magazine (April 1973),  p. 131.
50 Leigh Montville, “They Brace For Longest Day,” The Boston Globe, April 20, 1975.
51 George Sheehan, “The Boston Marathon: 3 Hours for the Race, but Like a Lifetime for the Runners,” New York Times, April 20, 1975. Sport Section, p. 2.
52 Clarence DeMar and Bill Cunningham, “Marathon More Than Race to DeMar,” Boston Herald, June 7, 1958.

by John Apostal Lucas

*Originally printed in: The Amateur Athlete, 28 (November 1957), 10-13.

Reprinted with permission from: Lucas, John, John Apostal Lucas: Teacher, Sport Historian, and One Who Lived His Life Earnestly. A Collection of Articles and Essays with an Autobiographical Sketch. (Lemont, PA: Eifrig Publishing, 2009), p. 1-8.

Available for purchase at www.eifrigenterprises.com.

Eifrigenterprises

Eifrigenterprises

John Lucas has dedicated his nearly half-century of academic life at Penn State University to researching and writing about his first love of sport, track and field, and the Olympics. 

He has attended every Summer Olympics since the 1960 Rome Games and has written several books, including Future of the Olympic Games.  From his over 200 monographs and articles, Lucas has selected a score of his articles written since 1953 for this anthology.  They cover the range of his academic interests.

A history of the marathon race – Part I.

A history of the marathon race – Part II.