Sports!

Cameron: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Lost Threads, episode five. My name is Cameron Ezell.

Cory: And I'm Cory Munson. Cameron, we're back after a long hiatus.

Cameron: Yeah, we had a few, uh, life changes, huh? Uh, new job for you. New city for me.

Cory: It's been such a long time that the actor that played Cameron in the previous episodes, we had to get a new one because Cameron was going through puberty.

So this is an exciting time and, uh, a rebranding for us.

Cameron: That's perfect. And do you know what's going on right now in the sporting world?

Cory: Folks, it's the Olympics. Yesterday was the inaugural opening ceremony for the Olympic Games held in Tokyo for 2020.

Cameron: Yes, a year after they should have [00:01:00] happened.

Cory: Well, it's been a rough year at that, and I think based on everything I've been reading, we were lucky we got an Olympic event at all.

Cameron: Yeah. I'm surprised they didn't just cancel it and wait for the next Winter Olympics, honestly.

Cory: And you know there is precedent for the Olympics being canceled.

Cameron: Right, what, during World War II?

Cory: Yes. Three times. 1916, 1940 and 1944.

Cameron: Okay, interesting.

Cory: And you know, actually the Olympics was also canceled for about 1,500 years, uh, before 1896.

Cameron: True.

Cory: So I think we can count that as well.

Cameron: We can mention why we're talking about the Olympics this week. It, you know, our episode today is not necessarily about the Olympics themselves, although we'll probably get into some of that.

Cory: We got some sports trivia for you today. We got some interesting sports from the past.

And of course we'll be talking about, uh, sports in relation to the Olympics.

Cameron: Well, do you want to, I think I, my voice just cracked there. Uh, you might have to find another actor [00:02:00] actually. Um, do you want me to go ahead and get started, Cory?

Cory: Yeah. I'm excited to hear what you found.

Cameron: So I was looking through some old newspapers as I am wont to do.

Cory: You and your newspapers.

Cameron: Oh, I just got piles and piles of them here, and I found one called Canoe Football. It was a sport invented by Eileen Allen in 1916. She was born in 1888 and she was actually well known during her time for being an Olympic swimmer and diver. As well as a silent film actress actually.

Cory: Ooh, a double threat.

Cameron: Here. I'll send you a picture of her and you can see what a smoke show she was.

Cory: I'm sorry, did you say smoke show?

Cameron: You know, it's just guys talking. One thing I want you to see in this outfit here is, you know, this is a one piece swimming suit, right?

Cory: Right. Yeah. It looks like a, like a gymnastics leotard.

Cameron: Yeah. So one important event from her life is she [00:03:00] fought for a long time to allow women to wear suits like this to be able to compete because at the time, women had to wear these ruffly heavy swimsuits that would probably drown you in most situations. They were not conducive to competition. They were just to look pretty.

Cory: And also, this made me think about, did you see, um, the Norwegian women's volleyball team, how they got, they got dinged because their shorts were too long. So it's it's like a total, total 180 from the story you're presenting right now.

Cameron: Yeah, that is, that is weird. She came in fourth place in the three meter springboard event in the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp.

She actually went on to coach track and field in the Olympics, uh, for 1928 and was the Women's swim team coach in 1932 in Los Angeles.

Cory: That's a pretty illustrious career.

Cameron: Yeah, I mean, she was an athlete, she was a coach, she was [00:04:00] an actress. Uh, pretty impressive. She organized the first all women's lifesaving group, or probably y'know lifeguards, as we probably call 'em today.

At the time, there just seemed to be this belief that rescuing someone from drowning required that you be a big, strong person. So it was just all men, but she was of the belief that it required skill more than anything else. And you know, we look around and see lifeguards today, it's men and women and she played a part in getting women into that.

Cory: Uh, I think it's mostly teenagers, Cameron.

Cameron: So going back to canoe football, it was a sport invented in 1916 by Eileen Allen, and it was a full contact sport where players would end up bloody with lumps and bruises getting hit by the canoe paddles, and it was a sport similar to water polo. Each canoe has two players.

You've got one that paddles and the other one is striking the ball towards the goal. Each team has four canoes. You've got the sprint boat, [00:05:00] you've got two guard boats, and you've got one goalie. A goal is only valid if it was struck from a boat, not in the water or anything. And if you capsize or fall out of the canoe, you must get back in to continue playing, so you can't interfere if you're out of the canoe.

Cory: Man, I can just imagine your hand just getting destroyed as, you know, eight oars go into for the ball at the same time. Wait, are, are you, you're, you're affecting the ball with your hands though, not the oars, correct?

Cameron: Uh, you can do either. So if you want to block a shot with a paddle, you can do with your hands either way.

What I want to show you is I did find a video. Let me send that to you,

Narrator: Further downriver on the Thames itself. Flood precautions were temporarily forgotten. Even though this stretch of river near maiden head overflows all too frequently, it served a vastly different purpose yesterday for it provided the setting [00:06:00] for the Watermen's regatta and the river banks from Maidenhead to Bray were crowded with people eager for an afternoon sport by the men who know this water best, and it didn't take them long to know the water even better, joining in a five side soccer match were the watermen in dark shirt. And the maiden head rowing club with hardly any rules and the whole river to play in. They soon found that the good soaking was the first qualification for making a splash at canoe soccer.

Cory: Oh my gosh. This is, uh, the first thing I wanna say is it had the exact, uh, announcer's voice that I was expecting there to be like, watch out for number 32.

Oh, capsized, you are all wet. The, the announcer. Um takes the time, multiple times to mention that in this game there's hardly any rules except have fun. It seems like a strategy that people use is they go, it's like a volleyball size ball, and like you just go up to it and then you hug that against your [00:07:00] canoe with your ore, and then someone will just come by and try and smack your canoe as hard as possible with a big wooden ore.

Cameron: I will say that they were probably not following the exact rules that Eileen Allen had in mind. They were just kind of doing this off the cuff. So that's canoe football. I, I think it would be pretty fun if you had a eight canoes at your disposal and, you know, 16 people or whatever it is.

Cory: You know, this also makes me think there, there aren't enough competitive sports where you're, you're trying to get the other person incapacitated.

And I'm thinking something like Mario Kart or Road Rash where you are, um, maybe racing against somebody and you are actively trying to impede their movement.

Cameron: The only thing that pops into my head is maybe like roller derby, where you're like slamming into people on roller skates, trying to knock them down.

Cory: Like a relay that involves paintball or something?

Cameron: Just people running around a track with like Airsoft [00:08:00] guns.

Cory: Yes. And people in the audience have them too. Alright, what else do you got for me?

Cameron: So I found this 1909 paper and they mentioned a new sport being played amongst Native Americans in Oklahoma, which they called Indian Ball, and it combines elements from football, lacrosse, baseball, and tennis, they said. Um, after some research though, I found that this sport is just, they, the newspaper was calling it Indian Ball. It's just called, uh, stickball, and it's been played by Native American Indians for- since the mid 17th century. Probably long before that. That's just the first recorded writing about it.

Cory: And what sports does it combine again?

Cameron: So what they said in the paper is that it combines elements from football, lacrosse, baseball, and tennis. I would say that it is closer to just lacrosse.

Cory: [00:09:00] I, I really love the idea and I was thinking like, what if there was some sort of a sport event where this guy comes out with a top hat and in it is just like slips of paper with every sport, and then people draw four slips of paper out of it. And then you have to make a, a sport based on those things. So like you pull out, okay, we got wrestling, golf.

Cameron: Oh, you just have to invent a new sport right on the spot.

Cory: Yeah. Or maybe you have a couple of hours to do it. And then we got Pokemon trading cards. All right. Good luck. You got an hour.

Cameron: This one though I, it is basically lacrosse. Stickball has been played for a long, long time.

It's sometimes it's called, you know, something by the tribe's name, maybe like Cherokee Stickball or Choctaw Stickball, or sometimes it's called Ishtaboli. It's known as the little brother of war. And that's because different tribes would actually use this sport in place of war. [00:10:00] It was just a way to settle disputes for a long time.

Cory: This reminds me of that Star Trek episode from the original series where the two civilizations don't actually go to war, even though they are at war, like they don't fight each other. They just fight virtually. Then any casualties that occurred during that virtual fight, like people just voluntarily incinerated themselves because they were taken out.

Cameron: So each tribe, they have their own specific play style and rules. When the Kanawaga Indians in Montreal played this game in 1834, the Canadians watched it and ended up creating more rules around it, and it became lacrosse. So lacrosse is based off of stickball.

Cory: That is such a European thing to do. Like look at all, look at all these folks having fun out in this field.

Cameron: I say, this just needs more rules.

Cory: You, you can't stand on your tiptoes for more than three seconds. It's not fair. You see?

Cameron: [00:11:00] So historically the game would be played with as many as 100 to a thousand men out in open plains with two marked goals on either side. And the game could last up to like three or four days in some instances.

And the goals could even be miles apart from each other.

Cory: This is like the cool form of LARPing.

Cameron: Yeah, I mean the, the, it got really bloody and violent because, I mean, it was a replacement for war, so there was violence involved and people did die playing this game. These days the game is still played, but it's typically played on a field about the size of football field, um, 'cause it's a little more convenient.

With a set of polls at each end for the goals, and teams are around 30 people.

Cory: 30 people per team?

Cameron: Yeah.

Cory: Holy moly.

Cameron: And it's still a violent game, but there are some rules now to try to minimize injuries. [00:12:00] You can't swing your stick at an opponent or hit them below the knees and you can only tackle a person in possession of the ball, but you must drop your stick first to do it.

Cory: I, I love the idea of a sport that has just almost too many people out there because like, you have to marshal them, like the people on your team somehow. If you're, if you're the team captain, like do you have like a bugle to be like Right flank, move forward, or like a series of flags?

Cameron: Yeah, I, I mean, I think in some instances it'll be played with fewer than 30, but you know, that's, you can see games with 30 people on each side, and you almost just kind of have to practice enough that your team becomes a hive mind and knows where to go and when to do it, when to pass. I think it would be a fun sport to watch. It's a pretty cool game. It is a lot like lacrosse. The sticks are still handmade to this day, and there's people who are passing down the knowledge of how they're made to their kids so they can [00:13:00] keep this tradition alive.

It's really cool.

Cory: Hey Cameron, I'd like to transition over to talking about the Olympics in general. 'cause I just can't, I can't keep my excitement up about this event that comes every four years that I don't think I've ever watched.

Cameron: Well, let's hear it.

Cory: One thing we didn't do is we didn't, we didn't establish our credentials to discuss, um, the the wide world of sports and our backgrounds and where we come from.

Uh, and I'll just go ahead and take the lead here. First of all, Cameron and I, big sports heads both watch big time, both watching and, and doing. I was the assistant golf coach for, uh, my high school team. I was in cross country for every year of high school, and I don't think I ever made a regional race once.

I never compete- I never, uh, what's the word? You were in cross country too. Did you ever go regional or state?

Cameron: I got varsity. I went to a couple regional [00:14:00] ones. I did all right.

Cory: Were you an assistant coach for golf as well?

Cameron: No, I just played,

Cory: oh, you must have not been that good then because

Cameron: why do you say that?

Cory: I mean, I don't know. The coach for our team said that they were, they reserved like that position for kind of the people that needed to show the other players how to do the sport.

Cameron: But you didn't actually compete?

Cory: No. No, because I was reserved for like training. You guys

Cameron: don't remember getting any lessons from you, but I'll take your word for it.

Cory: He told me in the nicest way possible that I was so bad at that sport that there was no way I was going to any kind of competition or traveling with the team. And I basically just paid the the due to be able to go to the golf course once in a while and have him show me how to putt,

Cameron: took you to mini golf.

Cory: So anyway, let's go ahead and talk about the [00:15:00] Olympics a little bit. The first Olympics ever. Started almost 2,800 years ago, like almost to the year.

Cameron: Oh, wow.

Cory: So the Olympics were held throughout antiquity into the Roman era, but they stopped doing the Olympics in 393 AD and that was when the Roman Emperor Theodosius banned the event as a Pagan event.

Less than a hundred years later that Roman empire would fall. And I know that correlation is not causation, but in this instance we can make a case for that.

Cameron: Yeah. You don't take away our sports.

Cory: Take that Rome. 1500 years later, 1896, the Olympics come back and they've been going ever since except for the couple of breaks we mentioned during World Wars.

I was excited to see that there were a couple of new events planned for these Olympics.

Cameron: Oh yeah. What do we got?

Cory: We got softball. We got baseball.

Cameron: [00:16:00] Okay.

Cory: Skateboarding.

Cameron: Hmm. Okay. I like that

Cory: we got surfing, rock climbing, freestyle, BMX.

Cameron: This is sounding more like the X Games now.

Cory: I know and I think like every, every Olympic committee gets to choose what's in and what's out.

So like next time there might not be surfing, for example. Another thing that they're doing this year are mixed gender events. So like teams of mixed genders, like in archery, triathlons, table tennis. There's also 3v3 basketball.

Cameron: It's just played on a regulation court though for like that you would use for 5v5?

Cory: Uh, no, actually the court is about 80% smaller.

Cameron: 80% smaller, or it's 80% the size of the original?

Cory: No, it's about the size of a standard American kitchen. Pretty cramped quarters in there. They just made it all relative to a, a normal game. I, I'm making this up. I have no idea.

Cameron: Yes. Okay.

Cory: I was looking at some odd events that have been in previous Olympic [00:17:00] games, so like I said, they might, like every committee can choose what events are gonna take place. And some might just occur once, and then the next Olympics they're like, ah, let's not do that one. For example, ballooning. Where people race in balloons.

Cameron: Well, you know, we still have, well, I'm not in Reno anymore, but, uh, balloon races are a big thing in Reno every year.

Cory: You know what's also a big thing in Reno? Bowling. We got the International Bowling Stadium or whatever it's called. I've actually never been in there.

Cameron: Me either. And that used to be an Olympic event?

Cory: Yeah, it was the, it was an Olympic event. I think just once. I don't know how many times. Roller hockey was also an event.

Cameron: I know trampoline was an event once in like Sydney or something.

Cory: There was also solo synchronized swimming in LA in 1984, so it's like synchronized swimming, except it's just one person doing, uh, like their own interpretive dance,

Cameron: synchronized to music, I [00:18:00] guess? Because you're not synchronized to other people.

Cory: Boy, what if there was no music though? Like not only are there no people around, you're just kind of flailing in the water to just a totally silent audience.

Cameron: There's a lifeguard just like waiting to figure out should they jump in and rescue this, this person rolling around.

Cory: There's also a swimming obstacle course at one time, and I was thinking, you know what the perfect-

if we're bringing in the X-Games anyway into the Olympics, like Ninja Warrior, like a Ninja Warrior course would just be absolutely wonderful for this.

Cameron: That would be cool.

Cory: I don't think parkour has ever been in the Olympics. I, I don't really know how you would judge that, but like with Ninja Warrior, you have just a clear, here's the time to beat, here's the course.

One year in the Olympics, there was competitive walking and it was described as people just trying to stay in first gear as best they could. You have, you have to have at least one foot on the ground at all times. Um, so people are just walking as fast as they can while like [00:19:00] adhering to the strict regulation of what a walk actually is.

Cameron: Well, both feet have to be on the ground or as, no. Is it just one?

Cory: If you can walk with both feet on your ground all the time, Cameron, I'm going to drown you in a lake as a witch. 'cause you're just gliding across the ground.

Cameron: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Cory: There was, uh, and I have this in my notes in all caps, pigeon shooting.

Jesus. Yeah. And then finally,

Cameron: I mean, if you listen to episode four. It's all about pigeons and I just can't imagine a sport where it's just about killing as many as possible.

Cory: Lost Threads is a sponsored friend of the pigeon folk, so we don't really approve of that.

Cameron: Yeah, the pigeons pay us.

Cory: Um, and then the final silly event I have that's actually taken place at the Olympics in 1900 in Paris was poodle clipping.

Cameron: Whoa. I've never heard of that one.

Cory: Yeah, it didn't really, uh, it didn't really stick around. The gold medalist won after they clipped 17 [00:20:00] poodles in a set amount of time, I guess.

Cameron: Oh, that's not what I was assuming poodle clipping was. I would assume It was like you get a poodle and you, it's like a judging thing on who styles the poodle the best, not who can cut the hair of more poodles than anybody in a set amount of time.

Cory: So with, with all that being said, I wanted to ask what events would you bring to the Olympics?

Cameron: I think a really fun one would be disc golf.

Cory: That is a great one.

Cameron: I think it would be like, I've watched some clips online of some amazing, like hole in one shots from like a long distance away. It's fun to watch.

Cory: I was going to say, let's talk eSports Cameron.

Cameron: Oh, yeah.

Cory: So I think eSports is a dumb name. We can make it a lot sexier. We can punch it up. Like, first of all, eSports are very decentralized. Like if [00:21:00] you're gonna play your, you know, your Dota or your, or your, your Halo or your Mario-

Cameron: Starcraft

Cory: Yeah, yeah.

Whatever it-

Cameron: Overwatch.

Cory: Yeah. Whatever it is you're gonna go to like that event and you're gonna just play that game. I'm, I'm talking think bigger. Every four years we have a eSport Olympics. But we're not gonna call it eSports. 'cause again, that's a, that's a silly name. I saw that the, the first eSport event happened in October of 1972 at Stanford University, where students competitively played the video game Space War.

The grand prize for the winner of that event was a subscription to Rolling Stones magazine. So I say we take that name, Space War, right? It's like sci-fi. There's some technology in there, and that's the name of our event we have every four years. During Space Wars, video gamers assemble from all over the world in a well ventilated space [00:22:00] and show what they're worth.

So you'd have events like, uh, you'd have technical events like field stripping and reassembling a pc. Maybe some hacking. You know, like the, like a Wikipedia thread challenge, you know, where like you have to like land, you have to get to from one word to another only by clicking links.

Cameron: Right, right. Yeah, I've seen that. So like get from, from like Barney the dinosaur to Barney Rubble or whatever.

Cory: Yeah, exactly.

Cameron: And in as few clicks as possible.

Cory: Uh, maybe there could be like speed run events like, you know, super Mario two and Contra, but then there'd be like a circulating challenge like Yoshi's wooly world.

Cameron: I mean, I, I, I love watching speed running. I think speed running would be really cool at the Olympics.

Cory: So I mentioned that there was a 1500 year long dark age of the Olympic Games where they just did not take place between before the Roman Empire fell to 1896. Mm-hmm. However, that is not entirely true.

There were Olympic games held in England in [00:23:00] 1612, but it's a little bit different than, um, the ones that we're used to. Basically what happened, this guy named Robert Dover, moved to a town in England and he was put in charge of setting up their mayday event, but instead of doing the normal fare in May activities, he decided I'm going to bring back the Olympic games.

So in 1612, in the town of Chipping Camden, the Cotswold Olimpick Games were held. These games were held off and on. But actually this event was revitalized in the 1960s and it has been played every year since.

Cameron: Okay, so what kind of events did they hold in their Olympics?

Cory: These are like peasant games that people have played forever.

These are games from the Highlands of Scotland,

Cameron: like Scoop Ball.

Cory: Like Scoop Ball?

Cameron: Yeah, where you got like that, it's like Jai alai, but it's like a plastic little scoop and you just throw the ball back to it and forth.

Cory: Oh yeah, yeah.

Cameron: That's like a family picnic game.

Cory: Yeah. You got like the Velcro pad and you're throwing the tennis [00:24:00] ball between each other.

Cameron: That's another good one. Yeah.

Cory: No, Cameron, this is a little bit more serious than that.

Cameron: Okay, so sorry. Sorry.

Cory: You have, you got your hammer throwing, you got your, as they say on their website, putting the shot, uh, there's an event called Spurning the bar. Which is, you might have seen this, it's like people are carrying something that's basically the dimensions of a telephone pole, and you have to lift the pole off the ground.

You run with it, and then you try and flip it. It, it's literally as tall as a telephone pole and just as thick, and you're trying to flip it and make it go as far as possible in the air. So like you're, you're hoping that it'll like fall away from you, and the further it falls away from you, the more points you get.

Cameron: Okay. That sounds really tough. I don't think I could ever do that one.

Cory: There's some pretty beefy guys that were doing the one I was watching. Oh. And also there are just a bunch of little separate family events for people to do. Like there's one where there's a giant puzzle and your [00:25:00] family has to put it together faster than another family.

But the video I was watching, underneath like the, the footage of a family doing this. I think this was like an an official video. It said "another pointless family event". So I think they're kind of dialed into like these are all just really silly things. There's a lot of people at these events and it seems like a lot of people show up to, to come check this out and to compete. There's a big tug of war, um, that's famous, but the most known event is shin kicking.

Cameron: Oh, okay. I could do without that one.

Cory: Yes. And there are rules of shin kicking and I like to read the first one. Competitors must wear long trousers or tracksuits and may cushion their shins by using straw.

They will be provided with white coats representing the traditional shepherd smock. Footwear may be trainers, shoes, or soft toed (i.e. unreinforced boots). Any form of metal reinforced on the footwear is expressly forbidden.

Cameron: Thank God.

Cory: This will be checked before and after your [00:26:00] bouts.

Failure to comply will result in instant exclusion in barring from future events. You know that they had to put so much weight on this because people were bringing steel toed boots to a fun family shin kicking event.

Cameron: It. This reminds me, there was this Netflix show called We Are The Champions, and it kind of highlighted some weird, uh, different sports around the world and it just kind of made me realize that you can turn anything, almost anything, into an interesting sport to watch even if it's shin kicking. Like they did chili eating. And so they just have like progressively hotter chilies that people eat. And some eventually people tap out and drink milk and then they're, you know, they're out of it. Um, but yeah, like these fun little events are-

you can make them interesting to watch.

Cory: The thing that struck me most about watching all the footage from this Olympic [00:27:00] event is that like everyone is like laughing and having a great time and clapping, and even if like you lose, like you're still cracking up because it's all so silly. And I, I really like that.

It's very charming and I, I'm obviously not a big sports person. But I do wanna say about the Olympic Games, it is extremely serious. Like it's, it's, uh, everything's on the line. Like people have worked their entire careers to get there. So yeah, I think I'd like to watch more majorly high production, silly events.

Cameron: Well, let me bring it back to the Olympics, um, and talk about another event from history that just actually was not a fun event. Which is the 1904 Olympics marathon. Firstly, I want to credit John Bois, whose YouTube channel actually introduced me to this event. It's a much more entertaining account of the race, so I recommend checking that out.

So as we mentioned already in 1904, the modern Olympics were still [00:28:00] very new, uh, because it just began in 1896. And this was the first Olympics held in the United States and only the third marathon race for the Olympics. The 1904 Olympics had very poor attendance as far as Olympic events go. And for the marathon race, the only countries that had attendance aside from the United States were South Africa and Cuba, and maybe Greece too.

Actually. I take that back. I think those three.

Cory: Do you know why the attendance was so poor? I mean, this is like, the great age of Europe. There's no war going on. Things are going pretty great economically.

Cameron: Yes. So the Olympics, um, in 1904 were actually supposed to be held in the big metropolis city of Chicago, but St. Louis that year was holding a big exposition around the same time to celebrate the anniversary of the Louisiana purchase. So they complained until [00:29:00] the Olympics were moved, like they just kicked their feet and stomped around and complained until they stole the Olympics basically. And St. Louis is not Chicago, it's just kind of, this, even back then was just a mediocre Midwest city compared to Chicago.

So there wasn't much interest for people to go there. So the original plans, I want to give a little bit of background on the, this whole event because it was kind of, uh, really reprehensible. So the original plans for the Louisiana Purchase Expo was also known as Anthropology Days. And it was all designed by some white supremacists to bring in cultures from around the world that were seen as primitive and inferior to white Europeans.

And the plan was then to set up what was essentially a human zoo where you would just have these white Americans and Europeans walk around and just gawk at these different cultures, and [00:30:00] the organizers would then put on a series of sporting events that would demonstrate just how superior white people were by having these trained white athletes compete against these other cultures who had no knowledge of European sports, like shot put or discus or whatever it might be. And then they would put together a day of what they considered primitive events like tree climbing, archery and mud throwing to show how maybe Filipinos or Africans were so much better at this. That's the whole background of the 1904 Olympics, essentially.

Cory: So were the events combined then into the same venue?

Cameron: Essentially, yeah. So they combined anthropology days and the Olympics. So you'd have some crossover.

Cory: Geez, I can just imagine the Olympic symbol for this one was like the inter locking rings with one gigantic white ring just surrounding the rest of them.

Cameron: So there's a lot to unpack about this, but what I wanted to focus on here was the marathon event, because it [00:31:00] is, it's just crazy. So the Americans that were heavily favored to win the marathon this year in the Olympics were the past three winners of the Boston Marathon: Sammy Melor, John Lordon, and Michael Spring.

There were two South African runners there, Len Tau and Jan Mashiani. They were only present because they happened to be there for the anthropology days events where they were recreating the Boer War.

Cory: Were they black?

Cameron: Yeah, they were. And there was also a Cuban who was a mailman from Cuba, known as, uh, his name was Félix Carvajal, and he raised money to get into the Olympics by running across the entire island of Cuba, and then bought himself a ticket to the US.

He landed in New Orleans, that's where his boat arrived, and he lost every bit of money he had in a dice game, so he had to [00:32:00] hitchhike from New Orleans to St. Louis to compete.

Cory: And, and then, and then he gets there and he finds out literally nobody else came to this event.

Cameron: Yeah, he's one of the very few who showed up.

Um, he arrived at the marathon like almost right before it started, and he's just wearing street clothes 'cause he doesn't own anything else. He's lost everything. So he's just ready to run the race in like this long sleeve blouse and full length trousers with a belt and leather shoes. And one of the other runners, they're dressed more appropriately for the most part, and they just felt bad for him, so they just cut off the legs of his pants so he could run in shorts.

Cory: Wait, they felt bad for him, so they cut off the pants legs. He was wearing his only pair of pants he had.

Cameron: Yeah, to turn them into shorts 'cause he's gonna be running this marathon.

Cory: Yeah, but he could have done that himself. He didn't give him any [00:33:00] shorts or anything. He's like, ah, come here. Snip, snip, snip. All right.

I fixed you.

Cameron: Well, he didn't have scissors either.

Cory: I guess that was nice of him then.

Cameron: So Cory, you've done some running. Um, what would you consider to be ideal running conditions in terms of weather?

Cory: Oh, 7:30 at night, eh, early fall.

Cameron: So maybe around 60 degrees or so. Maybe just-

Cory: yeah, yeah. 'cause you're gonna heat up.

Yeah.

And then like some, some water stations along the way.

Cameron: Okay. Well, this race was run at 3 in the afternoon on August 30th with temperatures around 90 degrees and about 90% humidity. Which is cruel. That is just nasty to run in. And let's say you're running this and you're feeling thirsty. Well, you better hold out because you only have a water tower at mile six and a well at mile 12.

You might [00:34:00] be wondering why were there so few water stations during this marathon, and it's because the guy who organized the marathon race for the Olympics was interested in using these runners as lab rats, essentially, for his research on purposeful dehydration to see if it could actually improve performance.

Cory: You know, you don't see enough of that today. Where science and the Olympics are combined together.

Cameron: Let's just see what happens if we force runners to like go barefoot or something. Now, most of this race was also run on dusty dirt roads, and the trainers were in cars next to the runners just kicking up even more dust.

So 90 degrees, 90% humidity, dust all around you, no water, and you've gotta run- what's weird, it's not 26.2 miles it was like 24 and a half or something, but

Cory: mercifully.

Cameron: Yeah, still 24 and a half miles in those conditions. One runner, William Garcia, nearly died because he breathed in so [00:35:00] much dust it tore up his stomach lining and he nearly bled to death.

Cory: Oh man.

Cameron: There was a runner, Fred Lorz. He tapped out at mile nine from cramps and just hopped on the car with his trainers. He gave up. But we'll come back to Fred. Remember Fred. Our mailman, Felix from Cuba, he was hungry because he lost all his money. He hadn't eaten in 40 hours and he's just running this race, no water, no food.

So he stopped at the side of the road where he saw some apples and started eating them. But the apples had turned rotten and they gave Felix stomach cramps. So he laid down during the race and took a nap. Despite this, he finished fourth.

Cory: How many people were in the race?

Cameron: There were 32 people in the race. 14 finished. Now one of the South African runners I mentioned, Len Tau, he was chased a mile off course by some feral dogs during the race. He ended up finishing ninth, and I mentioned earlier those three Boston Marathon [00:36:00] winners who were favored to win. Not one of them finished the race.

Cory: All right. I'm gonna ask the big question then.

Who won?

Cameron: Well, that would be Thomas Hicks and let me talk about him. So throughout the race, Thomas Hicks maintained a pretty good lead but was really struggling due to all these conditions. His competitor, Fred Lorz who I mentioned, who hopped on the trainer's car at mile nine, he got out of the car at mile 19 'cause he is starting to feel a little better and just finished the race.

So he skipped like 10 miles of the race and then just got out. When Fred arrived at the finish line, the stadium was cheering 'cause they don't have cameras or like people following them around.

Cory: Yeah, they don't know.

Cameron: Yeah. He was nearly crowned the winner by Teddy Roosevelt's daughter who was there until somebody like just called him out and he admitted to it right away that he cheated.

But he was like, oh, I was just having fun. I just thought I'd see what happened if you guys went with it. But he was,

Cory: it's just a prank [00:37:00] bro.

Cameron: Just a prank, bro. But he was disqualified and I think banned for like a little while. When Thomas Hicks heard that Fred Lorz won he almost just quit right then and there 'cause he was just in so much pain and struggling and- but his trainers did find out that he was disqualified.

So Hicks continued on and Hicks was actually one of the first known uses of performance enhancing drugs being used in the modern Olympics. He was begging for water from his trainers, but they kept denying him. They would like rinse his mouth out with a little bit or like pour it on him, but not give him water.

Instead, they give, gave him brandy, strychnine AKA rat poison in egg whites and the strychnine, I guess, stimulates your nervous system in small doses. Um, I'm not really sure what the brandy or egg whites do though. [00:38:00] But imagine running these conditions and that's all you're given is brandy and egg whites and rat poison.

Cory: And he won.

Cameron: Yeah, he won. By the end of the race, he was hallucinating. He thought, you know, in the last mile that he actually had 20 more miles to go, and his eyes were dull. His skin was gray. He finished first with a time of three hours, 28 minutes, 53 seconds, which, decent time for a non-competitive runner, but that is by far the slowest time in the Olympics for a marathon.

The next slowest is about 30 minutes faster, and that was in the 1896 Olympics.

Cory: So I see that the Olympic record for the marathon for men: two hours, six minutes and 32 seconds. And for women, two hours, 23 minutes and seven seconds.

Cameron: So more than an hour [00:39:00] faster. He lost eight pounds from the start of the race.

Cory: Just sweated it all out.

Cameron: Yeah, just I, I can't imagine having to go through that entire thing, like three and a half hours of absolute hell.

Cory: Folks, I hope you've learned a little something about the history of sports. Maybe a little bit about the Olympics, and mostly a little bit about yourself. What does that even mean?

Cameron: It's about wanting to break the mold.

Cory: We demand fun sports and we demand the Space Wars International competition. Next one, being held in 2024 in the city of... ah, St. Louis.

Cameron: Oh, no.

Cory: All right, well, we better get training and, uh, teach yourself how to not need water for a long time.

Cameron: And again, we'll have some pictures and some information up on our website, lostthreads.org.

Anything else, Cory?

Cory: That's it. Thank you all so much for listening. We need a [00:40:00] good call out, but we don't have one.

Cameron: We'll catch you next time.