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The New York Times, 25 July 1908, 1:3
The veteran athletes of Europe, America, Africa, and Australia, who have seen the greatest struggle of every sort on land and water for athletic supremacy, declared that there was nothing comparable to the great race to-day within their memories or in the other Olympiads since the modern cycle of these began. Dorando, an Italian, who was not thought to have a chance at the big event, reached the Staudium in advance of all his competitors in a state of complete exhaustion. Staggering like a drunken man, he slowly tottered down the home stretch. Three times he fell, struggled to his feet, and each time, aided by track officials, he fought his way toward the tape. This assistance by the officials of course put him out of the race, but his struggles were so pitiful that they continued to aid him until he was pushed across the line. Hayes, the American winner of the event, reached the Stadium while this scene was being enacted, and trotted across the line. It was a spectacle the like of which none living had ever seen, and none who saw it expect ever to see it repeated. The race itself, with fifty-eight of the best men winnowed from the runners of four continents competing; the arena where it was finished in the presence of an enormous cosmopolitan assemblage, with the Queen of England, the royal representatives of several nations, and hosts of finely dressed men and women from the most fashionable circles of Europe, as well as several thousand Americans, and the dramatic and exciting denouement at the end combined to make a historic day. Triumphant Day for Americans. It was an American day, and the resentments of yesterday, which rankled strongly in the breasts of Americans here when they came to the Stadium this afternoon, were forgotten not only in the victory of John J. Hayes, the Irish-American Athletic club runner, but in the splendid record made by the other Americans who were well to the front in the line of those that finished. Since the beginning of the Olympic games the great rivalry has been
between England and America, and while the minor competitions on the
track and field, in which the two nations specialized, were fought out,
Englishmen consoled themselves for all the American successes by the
thought that in the domain of long-distance running they always had
been supreme and whatever prizes they failed to grasp in this the Colonials
would pick up. |
London, July 24.—It would be no exaggeration in the minds of any
of the 100,000 spectators who witnessed the finishing struggle of the
marathon race, won by John J. Hayes of New York, at the Olympian arena
to-day to say that it was the most thrilling athletic event that has
occurrend since that Marathon race in ancient Greece, where the victor
fell at the goal and, with a wave of triumph, died.