History of the Marathon

Herodotos, the oldest source, wrote that Philippides was sent before the battle at Marathon to Sparta for militar aid. He ran 200 km in two days. Herodotos then wrote that the whole Athen army ran after the battle back to the city, not one single messager! Further in 300 BC. the tradition about the loneley marathon runner developed. Herakleides Pontikos (philosophe) told that a man named Thersippos, fully armed, ran with the message about the victory to Athen, and then finally died. These two persons have probably been mixed by a writer named Lucianus (100 AC.) when he tells the story again.

While this account is almost certainly fictionalized, it has inspired a great International sporting event, the Marathon. The first winner of the marathon in the Olympic Games was a Greec, Spiridon Louis.

When the Olympic games were revived in 1894, Michel Breal, a philologist at the Sorbonne, thought it would be a good idea to have a race commemorating the Pheidippides legend - a 26 mile race from Marathon to Athens. At just before 2:00 PM on April 10, 1896, the fifth and final day of the Games, twenty-five runners stood at the starting line by the Battle of the Marathon's warrior tomb in Athens. A hundred thousand spectators, many holding wine and bread for the runners, lined Marathon Road. After 2 hours 58 minutes and 50 seconds the 23 years old Spiridon Louis won, seven minutes before the second, also a Greec, Vasilakos and the Greec Velocas. But the Hongarian runner Kellner said he didn't have seen passing Velocas. After research Velocas was disqualified because he did a part of the distance on a car with horse. The winner received a silver medal, a certificate and a laurel-wreath. Spiridon Louis died in 1940.

In 1948, during the first Olympic Games after WWII in London, the Belgian runner Etienne Gailly, running his first marathon, entered the history of the Games. Arrived first in the stadium, he still had to do 400 m, Gailly fell down, exhausted, went up again, fell down again, staggered until the finish, encouraged by the crowd. He was passed by two competitors who thought the race was lost : for 400 m after more than 40 kilometres, he had to be satisfied with the bronze medal. 95 countries participated with in total 4099 runners.