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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, automobile sales were booming, motion pictures were on the brink of a golden age, and Americans 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 Optimism—and a fitting time for the nation to host its first Olympic Games.
With a leap of 5'3", Ewry won the standing high jump in the first Olympics held in the U.S.
photograph by
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 gingerly 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 as will take place tonight when the Atlanta Games begin, and the competition was drawn out until Nov. 23. Unfortunately, the St. Louis Games were contested almost entirely by American athletes. Because of the great distances foreign 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 13'7-1/2" inches and a Japanese Ainu had tossed the 56-pound weight 3'2". "In no place but America," the Baron muttered, "would one have dared place such events on a program."
The quintessential event of these bizarre Games was the marathon, run on Aug. 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 a laurel wreath.
The real winner, Thomas Hicks of Cambridge, Mass., staggered in minutes later and almost immediately 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 won the race in 3 hours, 28 minutes, 53 seconds, earned his living as a clown.
It was that kind of Olympics.
SI Olympic Dailies
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