The Runner Disqualified for a Car Ride and the Winner Fed Strychnine

On 30 August 1904, in the humid heat of St. Louis, runners at the Olympic Games set off on a marathon of roughly 25 miles over dusty hills, with reportedly only two places along the way to find fresh water. Thirty two men were recorded as starters, and they shared the road with wagons, horses and traffic. It is remembered today as one of the strangest races ever run.

The first strangeness belongs to Fred Lorz, an American runner who was struck by cramps at about nine miles and accepted a ride in an accompanying car. He later left the car, jogged into the stadium and crossed the finish line to cheers. Only after an official reported him was he disqualified, and he is said to have described the whole episode as a joke.

The second strangeness belongs to Thomas Hicks, who was declared the winner. Reports say that about seven miles from the finish his handlers gave him strychnine mixed with egg white, and later more of it with brandy. Strychnine was then used in small doses as a stimulant, and the episode is often called the first recorded drug use at a modern Olympics. His trainers carried him over the line.

The runner who accepted a ride was disqualified, while the runner who accepted strychnine was crowned. The contrast seems to need no explaining, yet it rested on a rule and not on a principle. The expectation that a runner must cover the course was plain, so the car was fraud. No written rule against stimulants is known to have existed, so the drug was merely unusual.

The runner who accepted a ride was disqualified, while the runner who accepted strychnine was crowned.

The rest of the field fared little better. Len Tau, a South African runner, was reportedly chased about a mile off the course by wild dogs. Felix Carvajal, a Cuban former mailman, is said to have stopped to talk to spectators, eaten rotten apples that gave him cramps and lain down for a nap. These were treated as misfortune, and only the car was treated as a crime.

Hicks kept his medal. Lorz is reported to have been banned for a time and then to have won the Boston Marathon the following year. The race left behind a question that sport has never settled. If fairness is whatever the officials thought to write down, then every rule is a record of what someone once failed to imagine, and the next strychnine is already on its way.