The marathon at the Summer Olympics is the only road running event held at the multi-sport event. The men's marathon has been present on the Olympic athletics programme since 1896. Nearly ninety years later, the women's event was added to the programme at the 1984 Olympics.
The modern marathon event was created and later refined through the Olympic competition. The idea of holding a marathon race at the first Olympics was suggested to Pierre de Coubertin by Michel Bréal. Based upon a popular myth stemming from the Battle of Marathon, in which Pheidippides ran to Athens from the town of Marathon, Greece to carry the message of a Greek victory, the 1896 course began in the town of Marathon and finished in Athens' Panathenaic Stadium – a distance of around 40 kilometres (25 mi).[1]
The race distance varied from 40 km to 42 kilometres (26 mi) in the early editions as it was typically based upon the distance between two points that the organisers felt were suitable. The 1908 London Olympics marked the introduction of the now standard distance of 26 miles, 385 yards (42.195 km).[2] However, it was not until the 1924 Paris Olympics that this distance became the standard at the Olympics.[3]
The Olympic marathon proved immediately popular in the Western world and quickly spawned numerous long-running annual races, including the Boston Marathon in 1897, the Tour de Paris Marathon in 1902, the Yonkers Marathon in 1907, and the London Polytechnic Marathon in 1909. Such marathons played a key role in the expansion of the road running movement internationally over the course of the 20th century.[4][5]
The Olympic records for the event are 2:06:32 hours for men, set by Samuel Wanjiru in 2008, and 2:23:07 hours for women, set by Tiki Gelana in 2012. The men's marathon world record has been improved several times at the Olympics: in 1908, 1920, and then at successive Olympics by Abebe Bikila in 1960 and 1964.[6] Abebe Bikila and Waldemar Cierpinski are the only athletes to have won two Olympic gold medals in the marathon. No athlete has won more than two medals of any colour. Ethiopia has won the most gold medals in the event, with six, while the United States has the greatest medal total with twelve overall.
Medal summary
Men
Multiple medalists
Medals by country
Women
Multiple medalists
Medals by country
Intercalated Games
The 1906 Intercalated Games were held in Athens and at the time were officially recognised as part of the Olympic Games series, with the intention being to hold a games in Greece in two-year intervals between the internationally held Olympics. However, this plan never came to fruition and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) later decided not to recognise these games as part of the official Olympic series. Some sports historians continue to treat the results of these games as part of the Olympic canon.[10]
At this event a men's marathon was held over 41.86 km and Canada's Billy Sherring won the competition. John Svanberg, the runner-up in the 1906 5-mile race, was also runner-up in the marathon. American William Frank was the bronze medalist.[11]
References
- Participation and athlete data
- Olympic record progressions
- Specific
- ↑ Athletics at the 1896 Athina Summer Games: Men's Marathon. Sports Reference. Retrieved on 2014-03-12.
- ↑ Athletics at the 1908 London Summer Games: Men's Marathon. Sports Reference. Retrieved on 2014-03-12.
- ↑ Athletics at the 1924 Paris Summer Games: Men's Marathon. Sports Reference. Retrieved on 2014-03-12.
- ↑ Longest Running Marathons. Association of Road Racing Statisticians. Retrieved on 2014-03-12.
- ↑ Lovett, Charlie (1997). Prologue: The Legend. Marathon Guide. Retrieved on 2014-03-12.
- ↑ Butler, Mark, ed. (2011). 13th IAAF World Championships In Athletics: IAAF Statistics Handbook. Daegu 2011. Monaco: IAAF Media & Public Relations Department. pp. 595, 612, 614–615, 705, 707. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 23, 2012. Retrieved September 28, 2011.
- ↑ The IOC attributes Théato's medal to France, despite later sources finding that his nationality was Luxembourgish.
- ↑ Corey is described in the 1904 Games report as a "Frenchman wearing the colors of the Chicago Athletic Association", but the IOC attributes his medal to the United States.
- 1 2 Both Sohn Kee-chung (Son Kitei) and Nam Sung-yong (Nan Shoryu) were from Korea. The IOC attributes both medals to Japan due to Korea being a Japanese colony at the time. All Korean Olympians during the Japanese colonial rule could only participate in the games as a representative of Japan and had to compete with Japanese names instead of their original Korean names. However, some sources still refer to Son Kitei as the first Korean to win an Olympic marathon today.
- ↑ 1906 Athina Summer Games. Sports Reference. Retrieved on 2014-01-26.
- ↑ Athletics at the 1906 Athina Summer Games: Men's Marathon. Sports Reference. Retrieved on 2014-03-12.
External links
Stephen Kiprotich (UGA)
Tiki Gelana (ETH)
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