Spicy Sport

I just finished watching one of my favourite TV programmes, QI. There was some hilariously funny stuff about the 1904 Olympic Games held in St Louis, Missouri, USA. Amongst many unusual occurrences, one of the strangest was the performance of a guy who won 6 gold medals in gymnastics - which would certainly be creditable at the best of times, but was made the more remarkable by virtue of the fact that he had a wooden leg. But it was the marathon where real mayhem ensued. The guy who finished first and received the thunderous applause of the crowd at the finishing post was a man called Fred Lorz. He was wreathed in the laurels of the victor and was presented to President Roosevelt's daughter. His apparent triumph was certainly assisted by the fact that he'd travelled the bulk of the 26 miles in a motor car, before jumping out and running the last five miles to the stadium. Unfortunately he'd been spotted and was fairly quickly stripped of his laurels. The men who finished second and third should have been disqualified for running under the influence of strychnine (a popular and effective rat poison thought (wrongly) to enhance performance), but after the debacle of Lorz, the crowd were happy to acclaim any finisher as the winner. So the gold medal went to a man called Thomas Hicks. At the finishing line Hicks was not only bent double as a result of strychnine-induced stomach-cramp but he was also blind drunk, having been drinking copious amounts of brandy as he ran to dull the pain of the strychnine cramps. In fact, he had to be helped over the finishing line (see picture) by two other men. In fourth place came an interesting character. This was Felix Carvajal from Cuba. He had hitch-hiked to St Louis and was ultimately so ill-equipped that he ended up running the marathon in a starched shirt and collar, and a pair of dress shoes and long trousers. He had been a postman in Havana and he collected funds to attend the Olympics from well-wishers in the Cuban capital. Naturally, as soon as he arrived in New Orleans he promptly lost all his money in a card game. He had to continue hiking the next 700 miles to St Louis and participate in the race in the clothes he was wearing, these now representing his only worldly possessions. During the race, he made the mistake of cutting through an orchard, where he stopped to pick and eat a few apples, which promptly poisoned him and caused him agonising stomach aches, slowing him considerably. Another competitor may have won had it not been for the fact that he was chased off course for a mile by an angry dog. Why oh why are modern Olympics nowhere near as entertaining as that?