The St. Louis Games were all American
orig. published July 19, 1996, Sports Illustrated Olympic Daily
©1996, Time Inc.
By Ron Fimrite
In 1904 the United States was a nation bristling with newfound bravado,
emerging as a major industrial and, after its victory in the Spanish-American
War, military power. The Wright brothers had taken a plane aloft only the
year before, atuomobile sales were booming, motion pictures were on the
brink of a golden age, and Americnas everywhere were gabbing on the telephone.
The energetic and athletic Theodore Roosevelt, waving the Stars and Stripes
and brandishing his "big stick," was in the White House. It was,
for Americans, an Age of Optimismp;and a fitting time for the nation
to host its first Olympic Games.
Three years earlier the International Olympic Committee had awarded the
III Olympiad to Chicago, but when officials of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition,
the World's Fair in St. Louis, threatened to stage a rival competition,
the IOC stepped ginerly aside, leaving the choice of host city to President
Roosevelt. As honorary president of the Exposition, he predictably opted
for St. Louis, and the IOC reluctantly agreed,
despite fears that the Games would merely be a sideshow to the World's Fair.
The change in venue was just the first twist to what would be the strangest
of all Olympic Games. They officially began on July 1, with hardly a trace
of the opening ceremonies, such to which we are acustom to today, and the
competition was drawn out until November 23. Unfortunately, the St. Louis
Games were contested almost entirely by American athletes. Because of the
great distances foreigh athletes would have to travel and the ongoing Russo-Japanese
War, only 13 foreign countries sent teams. Of the 625 participants in the
Games, 533 were from the U.S., and thus it was no surprise when Americans
won 238 of the 282 total medals.
Competition was so scarce in some events that one of the American medalists
in archery was a Civil War veteran in his 60's. Fred Wamboldt, an American
heavyweight wrestler, lost his only match in just 23 seconds and still won
a bronze medal. Four American trackmen -- jumper Ray Ewry, sprinter Archie
Hahn, hurdler Harry Hillman and middle distance runner James Lightbody--won
three events each.
Piqued by the contretemps over the venue selection, Baron Pierre de Coubertin,
founder of the modern Olympics, elected to stay home as well in Paris. He
winced in lordly disapproval when informed that during the Anthropology
Days, an unconventional competition for "aborigines" and "savages"
held on Aug. 12-13, an African Pygmy had put the shot 13' 7.5" and
a Japanese Ainu had tossed the 56-pound weight 3" 2". "In
no place but American," the Barron muttered, "would one have dared
place such events on a program."
The quintessential event of these bizzarre Games was the marathon,
run on August 30 over roads thick with dust and in temperatures and humidity
levels in the 90's. Of the 32 starters, 18 failed to finish. One runner
was chased a mile off course by an angry dog. Another Félix Carvajal
of Cuba, who ran in cutoff trousers and street shoes, paused long enough
in an orchard to get sick eating green apples. The first man across the
finish line was Fred Lorz from the Mohawk Athletic Club of New York, who
looked surprisingly fresh -- as well he might, since he traveled 11 miles
of the 25-mile course in an automobile. Lorz confessed his deception just
as Alice Roosevelt, the President's daughter, was about to crown him with
the laurel wreath.
The real winner, Thomas Hicks of Cambridge, Mass., staggered in minutes
later and almost immediatly fell unconscious, possibly as much from the
brandy and strychnine he had ingested to keep himself going as from the
rugged course itself. hicks, who wone the race in 3 hours, 28 minutes, 53
seconds, earned his living as a clown.
It was that kind of Olympics.
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