The 2021 Olympic Marathon
What’s going on?
Well, my friends we have an Olympic marathon coming up. It will be on August 8th. And since I know you, folks love the marathon as much as I do, let’s talk about it.
I write this 8 days before the event. You may already know what’s happenned. It’s been a different sort of Olympics in Tokyo in 2021. There have been lots of Covid related discussions. Some doping scandals. Some protests. And, interestingly enough, a good discussion around mental health.
But, besides all that, the marathon will close out the track and field events on Sunday the 8th. There are some special aspects to this year’s race.
Frist, the organizers placed the venue 400 miles north of Tokyo to mitigate the summer heat. This is a good thing because in the history of the summer games many of the marathons have been hot-sufferfests for the athletes. Although heat adds to the drama, I’m going to side with the athletes in appreciation of this move north.
They also just announced that there will be no spectators. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I don’t know about you but I think the athletes get energy from the cheering fans.
The marathon is a great spectacle and always has been. The event was part of the first Olympic games in 1896 in Athens. It was a 25ish mile race from Marathon to Athens to simulate the journey of Pheidippides to announce the defeat of the Persians.
For the first few marathons the distance varied between 25 and 26 miles. The first one was April 10, 1896 and a Greek water-carrier named Spyridon Louis won in 2:58:50.
The success of that first Olympic marathon in 1896 inspired a local athletic club in a backwater industrial port named Boston to set up their own version in 1897.
Eventually the distance settled in and was standardized to our 26.2 miles at the London games in 1908, supposedly to extend the race so the Queen could see it.
The Ancient Olympics started way back in the 8th century BC. That’s way back before the Romans. It was part of a religious festival celebrating Zeus. The Warring Greek chiefdoms would put aside their hostility and get together for some naked sprints and wrestling – so a lot like church today..
1904 is the most talked about Olympic games and marathon, because it was a total shit-show. The international Olympic committee made the mistake of letting the Americans host it as part of the St. Louis World Fair. And we promptly turned it into a side-show, like we do.
The winner that year was fed rat-poison and brandy to keep him going and carried across the finish line by his trainers.
Another runner DNF’ed at mile 9 and got into a car. The car broke down a couple miles from the finish so he thought it would be funny to run the rest of the way and pretend he won.
In addition, it turns out that the organizers took the hot weather as a good opportunity to test out some theories they had on dehydration on the marathoners. There were only a couple water stops.
These shenanigans led to some rule changes, or more appropriately, some rules. One of which is that you can’t physically assist a runner. You may wonder why officials don’t jump in to help that poor bastard that collapses 10 feet shy of the finish line. If they touch him he’s disqualified.
This new rule got the winner of the 1908 marathon in London disqualified as his handlers grabbed him before he crossed the finish line. So Dorando Pietri won but got disqualified and the gold went to American Johnny Hayes.
Some of my favorite Olympic Marathon stories include:
Emil Zatopek the Czech runner in the 1952 Olympics. After winning the 5K and the 10K he decided to jump into the marathon. He had never run a marathon before. He stuck the leader and out lasted the field to win. What I like about Emil was his old-school training. He would run in his army boots carrying a log on his shoulders. He was a tough dude.
Another great competitor was Frank Shorter who won in 1972. This is even more amazing considering the level of doping the Russians and Eastern Europeans were doing at the time.
A great story is the first Ethiopian great Abibe Bikila. He won the Olympic marathon in both 1960 and 1964. In the first race he famously kicked off his Adidas shoes because they were bothering him and ran to the win barefooted.
I still get a lump in my throat every time I see the video of Joan Benoit winning in 1984 in Las Angeles. This was the first time they let the women run. Joan made her move at 20 miles, and no one went with her. She injured her knee severely and had arthroscopic surgery 17 days before the trials, but recovered to win the trials and the marathon.
She entered the stadium alone, way ahead of the pack. She was dialed in. And before you say there was no competition that lead pack that didn’t match her move had Grete Waitz, Rosa Mota, and Ingrid Kristiansen – all marathon record holders. That was a hot day too. Joan’s from Maine where they don’t get a lot of Las Angeles type weather.
So who’s running this year?
35-year-old Galen Rupp won the trials. He has competed before at the Olympics and got bronze in the marathon in Rio.
Jake riley, 32 years old, finished second in the trials. He’s from the Boulder track club, and earlier trained with the Hanson’s distance project. He’s an all American out of Stanford.
And rounding out the field is our old friend Abdi Abdirahman. At 44 years old is a 5 times Olympian and the oldest Olympic marathoner form the USA ever. He was born in Somalia and moved to Arizona at age 12. He’s been tearing up the running scene for over 25 years.
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For the women…
First in the trials is Aliphine Tuliamuk from the University of Wichita. She’s running for team Hoka. She’s a 32-year-old Kenyan-American with a long pedigree of professional running. She became an American citizen in 2016. She’s had a busy year as she also had a cute little baby girl in 2020.
Second at the trials was Molly Seidel a runner out of Wisconsin. She and Aliphine broke from the pack at the trials and Molly was only 8 seconds back at the finish. She’s had an amazing cross country career. And she’s got a personal best from the London Marathon in 2020 of 2:25:10.
Odds are that the Olympic Marathon will be swept by the Africans, but you never know. That’s what I always loved about the marathon. Anything can happen. It has the capability to find unexpected heroes.
So, if you’ll excuse me, I have to eat some rat poison, followed by a shot of brandy and go for a run.