The main event
On August 30, at precisely 3:03 p.m., David R. Francis, president of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, fired the starting pistol, and the men were off. Heat and humidity soared into the low 90s, and the 24.85-mile course—which one fair official called “the most difficult a human being was ever asked to run over”—wound across roads inches deep in dust. The race was slightly shorter than today’s marathons, which are almost always 26.2 miles. “This was more like cooking than civil engineering,” the New York Times wrote in 2012. “Race directors designed their courses by a sense of feel, not by a fastidious recipe.”
The course had seven hills, varying from 100 to 300 feet high, some with brutally long ascents. In many places, cracked stone was strewn across the roadway, creating perilous footing. The men had to constantly dodge crosstown traffic, delivery wagons, railroad trains, trolley cars and people walking their dogs. Cars carrying coaches and physicians motored alongside the runners, kicking the dust up and launching coughing spells.
There was only one spot where athletes could officially secure fresh water, 12 miles from the start of the race. (Carvajal somehow got a drink at a water tower six miles into the course.) James Sullivan, the chief organizer of the games, wanted to minimize fluid intake to test the limits and effects of purposeful dehydration, a common area of research at the time.
Hicks, an experienced runner from Massachusetts, led the 32 starters from the gun. William Garcia of California nearly became the first fatality of an Olympic marathon when he collapsed on the side of the road some eight miles from the finish. The dust had coated his esophagus and ripped his stomach lining, causing serious hemorrhaging. Had he gone unaided an hour longer, he might have bled to death.
Lordon, one of the Americans, suffered a bout of vomiting and gave up. Len Tau, one of the South African participants, was chased a mile off course by a wild dog. Carvajal trotted along in his cumbersome shoes and billowing shirt, making good time even though he paused to chat with spectators in broken English. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s car “passed the little Cuban three miles out, still running at an even gait, and he waved his cap and yelled enthusiastically,” as the paper reported the following day.