If you ever, and I mean EVER think that you fucked something up royally, remember that the organizers of the 1904 Olympic marathon:
- Had zero stations for water on the 26 mile (42 km) course
- Accidentally gave North American competitor Tom Hicks a cocktail made of egg whites, brandy, and actual fucking rat poison
- Had a guy come into the race late wearing a beret and cutoff slacks, sneak into an apple orchard during the race because no food had been given to him for 40 hours, eat rotten apples, projectile vomit onto the track, fall asleep for hours, and finish in fourth place OVERALL because most of the other runners collapsed of exhaustion or injuries
- Conducted the race on a dusty road, which caused so much dust to be kicked into the air that an American runner somehow inhaled enough to tear his STOMACH LINING open
- Accidentally released feral dogs onto the track
- Fucked the other competitors up SO BADLY that Tom Hicks—the guy who ate RAT POISON and was HALLUCINATING the entire run—came in first place
Unsurprisingly, this phenomenal display of incompetence (and stupidity) was put together by a racist for racist reasons. The whole event surrounding the marathon was intended to- to quote the article I read- “showcase white American excellence”, and included what the article calls “nonwhite performers” (so… presumably not athletes?) competing in events they had never done before “to flaunt their athletic inferiority to the world”.
Soooo yeah. Outside of rather outdated ideas such as drinking during exercise being bad (some people are saying the drink with rat poison was on purpose because they believed it would make the competitor run better, some people are saying it was an experiment and I don’t know if either point is true) the absolute incompetence on display is because the priority was… well… racism, rather than. You know. Competence. So. Through that lens it becomes less shocking.


























