Introduction
The Boston Marathon is less a great footrace or athletic
contest than a magical play on a storied stage. Boston draws
runners unto itself as does no other marathon race. The very
name evokes reverence and homage. Boston is an emotional
experience as well as an exacting physical challenge. A bond
exists between marathon runners and those twenty-six miles of
New England roadway that lie between the little town of
Hopkinton and the foot of the Prudential office tower in
downtown Boston. The traversing of these winding, hilly miles
each spring, first by a few in the last century, now by
thronging thousands, is a spectacle unmatched in sport.
Other marathons have tried to
copy Boston. None has managed to recreate its essence. Boston
is more than a footrace. It is a celebration, a festival, a
sacrament blessed by assembled multitudes. The mood is
palpable.To run Boston is to run for the love of running. The
reward is the glory of winning or the satisfaction of having
finished the race. Boston is not a pitting against but a
drawing together of beings with a manifest zest for life.
Tradition is the strength of Boston, its fabled past dating
back to 1897, but renewal is its soul. Boston is an annual
reaffirmation of the human spirit. Generations of runners have
said so with their presence.
Part of the reason is spring.
The Boston Marathon coincides with the vanishing of snows and
the first stir of life in the New England soil. One of the
first places to turn green each spring is the western slope of
Heartbreak Hill, the point at which more Boston marathons have
been decided than any other. The race is one with the wind
gusting up the Charles River and colts prancing circles in
Massachusetts fields.
It is also bound up with Yankee
pride. The first Boston Marathon was run on Patriot's Day and
it is still run on Patriot's Day, the third Monday in April.
The holiday commemorates the battles of Lexington and Concord
and the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775. The
house where Paul Revere ended his ride through the night,
warning of the advance of the hated British Redcoats, is
located near the end of the marathon route.
The idea for the marathon came
from the first modern Olympic Games of 1896 in Greece. The
highlight was a twenty-five-mile footrace retracing the path
of the lone warrior Phidippides who is said to have run from
the Plain of Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C. to shout the
victory of Greek soldiers over invading Persian forces. Legend
tells that Phidippides arrived triumphant, announced,
"Rejoice! We Conquer!" And then fell dead.
A delegation from the Boston
Athletic Association, then a moneyed and exclusive club,
attended the 1896 Olympics and returned so impressed that it
decided to hold a marathon of its own. The first Boston
Marathon was run April 19, 1897, over a course that stretched
from the town of Ashland, southwest of Boston, to the BAA
Clubhouse on Exeter Street, a distance of just under
twenty-five miles. (a)
Tom Burke of the BAA scraped a
line in the dirt on the road in front of Metcalfe's Mill and
instructed fifteen starters to line up. An entourage of
bicycles and horsedrawn carriages waited to accompany them. At
12:19 p.m. Burke held a gun in the air and fired a shot. Away
the assemblage dashed in a clatter of dust and noise. J. J.
McDermott of New York City won the first Boston Marathon in a
time of two hours, fifty-five minutes and ten seconds
(2:55:10). He wore heavy boots. stopped en route for a massage
and became entangled near the finish in a funeral procession,
causing two electric cars to stall. In victory he announced. I
doubt I shall ever again run in a marathon race."
(1)
McDemmott retired but the
marathon has been run ever since, making it the oldest annual
marathon footrace in the world. The sole exception was 1918
when a military relay race was substituted in deference to the
First World War. At times the marathon has seemed more an
obstacle course than a footrace. Twice in the early years
runners were brought to a standstill by freight trains,
including the races won by Canadians Tom Longboat in 1907 and
Fred Cameron in 1910. Runners also have been savaged by dogs,
jostled by overeager spectators. and sent flying in collisions
with bicycles and pace vehicles. The legendary Clarence DeMar,
seven times a winner at Boston, felled interfering dogs with
his boot and fans with his fist.
The BAA chose the Boston course
because it was convenient. Runners could catch the train to
Ashland in the morning and run back to Boston in the
afternoon. The train also transported the bicycles of
attendants assigned to each runner and carried out the
sponsors and hackers of leading entries who bet on the race
and followed its progress in the comfort of horsedrawn rigs.
Horses, less fit than the runners, were changed at livery
stables in the succession of small towns along the course. The
towns in turn became the official race checkpoints and went
unchanged until 1983, quaintly out of keeping with the uniform
divisions of distance in modern marathon races.
The first comes at Framingham,
6.75 miles into the race, then Natick, 10.5 miles; Wellesley,
13.5 miles: Woodland, 17.75 miles; Lake Street, 21.5 miles;
Coolidge Comer, 24.12 miles, and the modem finish, 26 miles, a
bright yellow line on the asphalt in front of the Prudential
Centre.
Without realizing it the BAA
chose a course of bedeviling subtlety. The modern start is a
mile-long downhill plunge from the head of the main street at
Hopkinton. a town of seven thousand with tall church spires,
white wooden houses and sense of abiding order. Overall the
course falls from an elevation of tour hundred and ninety feet
at the start to just twelve at the finish. Yet the descent is
deceptive, luring runners out at a fast pace only to punish
them in the Newton Hills. three major ascents beginning at
eighteen miles.
The last and steepest of the
hills comes at Boston College. Unnamed in the early years of
the race it has been known for the last half century as
Heartbreak Hill. in recognition of its toll of runners. More
races have been won or lost on Heartbreak Hill than any other
section of the course. The reason is less the height -
although steep, the hill rises only ninety feet - than its
location. It comes at twenty-one miles when many marathoners
are struggling with that phenomenon known as "the wall" the
point at which muscle fuel dwindles and overwhelming
exhaustion sets in. Heartbreak is where Boston takes back what
it gave so easily at the outset.
The great unknown at Boston is the weather. In 1908 runners
ran through a snowstorm. In 1914, the year Jimmy Duffy of
Hamilton held off fellow Canadian Edouard Fabre of Montreal,
the temperature rose to eighty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. It
reached a ludicrous one hundred and six degrees at the
Hopkinton High School in 1976, the year thousands of
spectators saved the day with water hoses. Often, however, the
temperature is ideal, in the forties or low fifties, with grey
skies and sometimes a refreshing light rain. The wind can blow
too, from all directions. In 1975 it blew from behind, pushing
Bill Rodgers to an American record.
(2)
Only a few runners ran Boston
each year for much of its storied history. When champions like
Clarence DeMar, Johnny Miles, Les Pawson, Tarzan Brown and
Gerard Cote made their mark the field often consisted of a few
dozen men. Women were not officially entered until 1972,
although as early as 1951 "a woman in red" from Canada is
rumored to have completed the race.
(3) The first woman known to have done so was Roberta Gibb
in 1966 but she was overshadowed the following year by
Kathrine Switzer who ran with an official number after
entering as "K.V. Switzer." Angry BAA officials tried to
remove her from the race when they found out, resulting in a
sequence of photographs that stand as a landmark in women's
sport. Switzer finished in 4:20:02.
As recently as the early 1960s
only a couple of hundred runners entered Boston. They ran the
race, ate a bowl of beef stew and went home. Then came the
beginnings of the North American running boom and the field
began to swell, surpassing one thousand for the first time in
1968. Two years later, alarmed at the growth, BAA officials
imposed qualifying standards. The marathon explosion swamped
them anyway. In recent years more than seven thousand official
runners and half as many illegal runners or "bandits" have
converged on Hopkinton on Patriot's Day. Helicopters hover
like dragonflies above the spectacle and television cameras
record the long procession back to Boston. Hundreds of
thousands of spectators come out to watch, their ranks
creating a twenty-six-mile-long gauntlet of applause and
cheers.
A highlight of the course is
Wellesley where the women of Wellesley College line the route,
as they have since 1897, and cheer runners through with a
spine-tingling crescendo of shrieks and screams. Rare is the
runner who quits at Wellesley.
The alchemy between runners and spectators has always been
special at Boston, often compensating for organizational
shortcomings. For years before water stations were set up
along the course runners depended on spectators for fluids to
quench their thirst. Cups snatched from outstretched hands
oftened contained not simply water but beer, ginger ale,
lemonade or scotch and soda. Other difficulties were
encountered too.
Jack Caffery, the first
Canadian victor at Boston, had trouble finding the finish line
in 1900. Jerome Drayton, the winner in 1977, was almost
knocked down in a chaotic start. Jacqueline Gareau arrived at
the finish line in 1980 to find victory stolen by an impostor.
Only recently have standards at Bosthn been brought into line
with the needs of athletes running twenty-six miles.
Yet runners have always been beckoned by Boston, the great and
gifted, the ordinary and unknown. Often the race has inspired
the humble to triumph over the great. No Olympic marathon
champion has ever won at Boston. Several have tried. All have
failed. No one is sure why.
Tom Hicks, the 1904 Olympic
champion, tried tour times. Albin Stenroos, the 1924 Olympic
winner, was defeated by Johnny Miles, an unknown Nova Scotia
delivery boy. Abebe Bikila, the great Ethiopian, twice Olympic
champion in the 1960s, ran fifth at Boston.
Ten Canadian men and one
Canadian woman have run to victory in the Boston Marathon,
three of them more than once. Jack Caffery won in 1900 and
1901, Johnny Miles in 1926 and 1929, and Gerard Cote, Canada's
greatest Boston champion, four times in the 1940s. No country
other than the United States itself has a richer claim on the
history of the race.
Jack Caffery won a small
fortune for his backers in 1900. Tom Longboat cut five minutes
off the course record in 1907. Fred Cameron defeated a runner
named Clarence DeMar in 1910. Jimmy Duffy lit a cigarette at
the finish line in 1914. Edouard Fabre celebrated in 1915 with
bottle after bottle of beer. Johnny Miles preached a sermon in
1926. Dave Komonen ran to victory in shoes he made himself in
1934. Walter Young ran in hopes of finding work in 1937. He
won and became a policeman. Gerard Cote smoked cigars and
danced the night away in the 1940s.
Jerome Drayton heaped abuse on
the BAA in 1977. Jacqueline Gareau waited a week for victory
in 1980. The stories of these athletes make up a little known
chapter of Canadian sports history. They also provide a unique
perspective of the development of one of the world's great
sporting events, scattered as they are across much of the near
century of its history. Each story is leavened by moments of
lightness but the common theme is one of uncommon triumph over
adversity. To none did athletic achievement come without
sacrifice and courage. Each was called upon to rise above the
unfair and unexpected en route to personal excellence. Each is
an example of the power of human will and motivation. All tell
us something of heroism.
Footnotes
(a) No standard marathon
distance existed at the time. Anything in the range of 25
miles was considered suitable. The modern standard for the
marathon came into being at the London Olympics of 1908. To
let the Royal Family watch in accustomed comfort, the starting
line was drawn at Windsor Castle and the finish line before
the Royal Box at Olympic Stadium. The distance happened to
measure 26 miles, 385 yards (42 kilometres, 195 metres) which
later became the accepted marathon standard. The initial
Boston course measured 24 miles, 1,232 yards and was not
changed until 1924 when the BAA accepted the longer standard.
This moved the starting line back to Hopkinton, one town west
of Ashland. Remeasurement in 1927 determined the course to be
176 yards short and a correction was made It remained accurate
until 1953 when highway alterations shortened the route to 25
miles, 938 yards, an error not calculated until 1957. Since
1957 the course has measured the full marathon standard.
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David Blaikie
Ottawa
March, 1984 |
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