Dorando Pietri
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Dorando Pietri, often wrongly spelled Petri (October 16, 1885 - February 7, 1942) was an Italian athlete famous as the protagonist of a dramatic epilogue of the marathon race of the 1908 Summer Olympics in London.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early years
Pietri was born in Mandrio, a frazione of Correggio, but spent his youth in Carpi (Emilia-Romagna). Here he worked as shop-boy in confectionery. He was 1.59 m high.
In the September 1904 the most famous Italian runner of the time, Pericle Pagliani, took part in a race in Carpi. According to tradition, Pietri was attracted by the event and, still wearing the working dress, run before Pagliani until the arrival. A few days later Pietri debuted in a distance race, arriving second in the 3,000 m of Bologna.
The following year he scored his first international success, winning the 30 km in Paris. On April 2, 1906 Pietri won the the qualifying marathon for the Olympics Games to be held that year in Athens. However, in the Olympic race he was forced to retire by intestinal ill when he was leading it with 5 minutes of advantage over the followers.
In 1907 he won the Italian championships. He was then the undisputed leader of Italian long distance races from the 5,000 meters to marathon.
[edit] 1908 Olympics
Dorando Pietri trained hard for the 1908 Olympics of London. In a test in Carpi he had run for 40 km in 2 hours and 38 minutes, an extraordinary result for the times. The London marathon amounted to 42.195 km, a distance which became official from 921. 56 racers were at the start, including Pietri and the fellow Italian Umberto Blasi. The day was unusually hot for the British standards. Race was started at 14.33 of July 24, 1908.
Pietri began his race with a rather slow pace, but in the second part began a powerful progression which allowed him to overcome all the other runners preceding him. At the 32th kilometer he was second, 4 minutes behind South African Charles Hefferon. When he knew that Hefferson was in crisis, Pietri further increased his pace, overcoming him at the 39th kilometer.
However, with only two kilometers missing, Pietri began to feel the extreme fatigue spent during his remounting effort and the deshidratation. When he arrived into the stadium, he entered the wrong path. When the umpires redirected him on the correct one, he fell down for the first time. He rose again with their help, in face of the trembling 75,000 spectators.
He fell four times more, and every time was helped by the umpires to stand up. In the end, though totally exhausted, he managed to reach the arrival. Of his total time of 2h 54min 46s, ten minutes were needed for the last 350 meters. Second was American Johnny Hayes. His team presented immediately a complaint against the umpire help received by Pietri, which was accepted. Pietri was disqualified and cancelled from the arrive order of the marathon.
[edit] International celebrity
Pietri's feat touched all the spectators of the stadium. As a compensation for the missing medal, Queen Alexandra gave him a gilded silver cup: proposer of the award was the writer Arthur Conan Doyle who, according to some sources, was the megaphone bearer who supported Pietri next the winning post.
Pietri became suddenly an international celebrity. Composer Irving Berlin wrote a song entitled to him, "Dorando". The Italian runner received request to took part in exhibition races in the United States. On November 25, 1908, in New York Madison Square Garden, a match race between Hayes and Pietri was organized: the latter was the winner. The same feat repeated in a second similar race on March 15, 1909. Pietri won 17 of the 22 races he partook to during his American tourney.
He returned to Italy in May 1909. He continued the professional activity both in his native country and abroad for two more years. His last marathon was that of Buenos Aires, on May 24, 1910, where he obtained his personal best of 2h 38min 48:2s.
Pietri's last race in Italy was a 15 km held in Parma on September 3, 1911, which he won. His very last race was again a victory, at Göteborg (Sweden), in the October of the same year. He was 26 at the time. In three years as professional runner he had gained 200,000 lire by prizes only, an enormous sum for the epoch.
He invested these incomes in a hotel he opened in collaboration with brother. However, as an entrepreneur he didn't show the same capabilities as runner. He hotel went bankrupt, and he moved to Sanremo, where he directed a car workshop.
Pietri lived in that city until his death, by heart attack, at the age of 56.
