The History of the Marathon

In his book, Olympic Marathon, Charlie Lovett devotes a short chapter to each of the Olympic marathons - including a view of the participants of each race, the politics and the perserverence. Through permission, we include four chapters of this book here, describing the marathon myth, the creation of the first marathon and that race itself, the struggle to include a women's Olympic Marathon and the first women's race. Fascinating reading and a fascinating book:

• Prologue: The Legend
• Ch. 1: The Games of the I Olympiad: Athens, 1896
• Ch. 25: The Fight to Establish the Women's Race
• Ch. 26: The Games of the XXIII Olympiad: Los Angeles 1984

Only five men and eight women were able to follow one marathon world record with another. James Peters set four marathon records between 1952 and 1954, while Abebe Bikila, Derek Clayton, Khalid Khannouchi, and most recently Haile Gebrselassie each set two world records in the race. On the women's side, Greta Weitz set four world records in a row from 1978 to 1983 (the last stood only for one day!), while Chantal Langlace, Jacqueline Hansen, Christa Vahlensieck, Joyce Smith, Tegla Loroupe and most recently Paula Radcliffe each broke the marathon record twice.

Perhaps the most famous of all of the world records were the races of Abebe Bikila, the barefoot Ethiopian, who set world records four years apart while winning the Olympic Marathons in 1960 (barefoot) and 1964 (wearing shoes).