The silver cup of water carrier Spiridon Lewis, the first marathon runner

When the founding Olympic Congress at the Sorbonne in 1894 decided that the first Games would be held two years later in Athens, Professor at the Collège d'France Michel Gilles Alfred Breal (1832–1915), a French comparative philologist and researcher of antiquity, wrote on September 15 to his a letter to his friend Baron Pierre de Coubertin: "When you go to Athens, see if a race can be organized from Marathon to the Pnyx (the hill in Athens on which the citizens of Athens gathered at democratic assemblies). It would have an ancient character... I would undertake to present the Marathon Cup to the winner of the marathon".

photo: wikipedia.org

MARATHON - THAT MAGIC WORD

The race that Breal envisioned was based on a symbolically powerful legend - the historical accuracy of which is debated - that in 490 BC Philippides ran about 42 kilometers from Marathon to Athens to shout with his last atoms of strength: "Nenikēkamen!" (we won) – and died of exhaustion.

Long before Breal proposed the idea of ​​an Olympic marathon race, the libertarian symbolism of the Battle of Marathon was celebrated in European intellectual and artistic works.

British philosopher John Stuart Mill believed that the Battle of Marathon was more important to British history than the Battle of Hastings, which led to the Norman conquest of England in 1066.

Lord Byron, the romantic poet who, as a participant in the Greek War of Liberation, died in the city of Missolonghi on the Gulf of Corinth of malaria on April 19, 1824, considered Marathon to be a magical word associated with the idea of ​​freedom.

From the second half of the 18th century, the European intelligentsia was fascinated by ancient art and classical civilization in general, including its sporting spirit.

Already in the Renaissance, the publication of Pausani's Description of Greece and Pindar's victory odes widely aroused interest in the ancient games. The Greek War of Independence in 1821 encouraged German and British historians to systematically investigate all aspects of ancient Greek history. This interest in the ancient games was further enhanced in the early 1870s when the German Archaeological Institute began excavations at Olympia.

"BRITISH SCHOOL", DE COUBERTAIN, THURNFERRAIN AND RIGA OD FER

In Britain, as early as 1612, the witty lawyer, restaurateur and writer Robert Dover improvised and, until the start of the Scots-Irish-English Civil War in 1642, held an "English version of the Olympic Games" in Gloucestershire, which included card games, chess and dancing, running, jumping, hammer throw, pole vault, wrestling and horse racing. The Baron of Berenger organized the Olympic Festival at Chelsea Stadium in London in 1832 and another in 1838 to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria.

The young prophet of modern sports, the French baron Pierre de Coubertin, was most directly influenced by William "Penny" Brooke, a lifelong champion of physical education, who organized the Shropshire Olympic Association in 1861. This led to the founding of the National Olympic Association four years later.

When he visited Brook in 1890, Coubertin was impressed by the understanding of sports on the island where football, rugby, cricket, rowing, athletics, boxing...

Sports and journalism pedagogue Professor Sergije Lukacs wrote in the text "Erase Berlin 1936." (NIN 1972, book Reflections of time, 2007) wrote that at the University of Rugby, Thomas Arnold (died 1842) started from the assumption that in physical exercise everything must be free: competition, play according to the rules - with fair play.

That, writes Lukacs, is the antipode on the continent where the gymnastic military system of "physical exercise" rules.

Movement of gymnastic societies Turnferain (Turnverein), created in Germany in 1811 in the atmosphere of the Prussian romantic and aggressive awakening after the defeat of Napoleon in Jena in 1906, nurtured the understanding of physical education as a means of protecting the nation.

And Coubertin, born in 1863 and raised in the shadow of his country's devastating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, believed that France lost the war due to physical and spiritual lethargy caused primarily by poor educational methods. Lukacs, however, recalls that during his military training, Coubertin developed his own anti-militaristic spirit.

And the Swede Ling modifies the German idea of ​​physical exercise: the ideal is not a soldier, but a healthy man, Lukacs writes.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Turnferain movement also influenced the formation of the Sokol movement in the Czech Republic, which was popular in the Slavic nations. At the falconry flights, the idea of ​​mass sports and national awakening was promoted.

The early generation of Greek physical education instructors were trained in the German-Swiss and then the Swedish system of sports, which they were influenced by.

Christina Kouluri from the Athens University of Social Sciences Pandio (Pantheon) in the article "From Antiquity to Olympic Revival: Sport and Greek National Historiography" writes that the acceptance of the ideals of ancient Greece in Greece itself in the 19th century came "via Europe".

One of the transmitters of that idea was Rigas Velestinlis, Riga of Fera, an advocate of the pan-Balkan uprising against the Ottomans, who was strangled by the Turks in the Nebojšina tower in Belgrade in 1798. He, among other things, published, printed and distributed the translation of the play Olimpija by the Italian poet Pietro Metastazi, a work whose theme was precisely the Olympic Games and alluded to the glory of ancient Greece.

Greek history professor Spiridon Lambros (1851-1919) stated a century later: "Rigas believed that the drama of the Olympic Games contributed to the rise of the nation no less than military preparations."

photo: wikipedia.org

AFTER BANKRUPTCY, MARATHON

The president of the Greek Olympic Committee, Demetrius Vikelas, understood the symbolic importance of the proposal to restore the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, but the Greek government was not happy about it at first. In 1893, then Prime Minister Karilaos Trikoupis announced: "Unfortunately, we are bankrupt."

Thanos Vermis, professor of political science at the University of Athens, writes that the bankruptcy was caused by too heavy loans for railway construction.

Resistance to the restoration of the Olympic Games in Greece ended when George Averof, a Greek merchant and shipowner from Alexandria, who became rich trading on the Nile, donated 920.000 gold drachmas to build the Panathenaic Olympic Stadium in Athens on the foundation of the ancient stadium, also called Kalimarmaro (The Beautiful marble), because white marble from Mount Pentelion was used in the construction, which was once used to build the Parthenon on the Acropolis.

Many logistical problems had to be solved because the marathon race was a new sport. The longest running discipline at the Olympia games was dolihos (24 furlongs, slightly more than 4,6 kilometers).

Neither Breal nor the other proposers knew the exact distance between Marathon and Athens; at that time it was estimated at 42 to 44 kilometers. The length of the marathon course was fixed at 42.195 kilometers only at the Olympic Games in London in 1908. That a race at that distance was feasible was proven in February 1876 when Georgios Gregoriu, a runner from Etnikos Athletics, started a trial run on the burial mound at the site of the battle and finished at the Panathenaic Stadium.

The government of King George I of Greece hired Colonel Papadiamantopoulos, a fan of athletic competitions, to assemble a team of Greek athletes capable of winning a medal as an officer on leave.

Although 1896 Greek athletes participated in the 230 Games compared to only 83 from 13 other countries, it was clear to Papadiamantopoulos that the Greek team could not achieve significant success against athletes trained at the most prestigious institutions in the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Hungary or Australia.

That's why he focused all his efforts on the marathon, an unprecedented event, and therefore a fertile ground for surprises.

ELIXIR - COGNAC AND ORANGE FROM A GIRL'S HAND

The Greeks flooded the Organizing Committee with requests to participate in the race. One was directed by Spiridon Lewis, for friends Spiros, born on January 12, 1873 in a poor family on the outskirts of Marussia, a village north of Athens.

He has never participated in any official competition before. "He had no coach, no training program, no special diet and never trained, except for running 30 kilometers every day through the streets of Athens carrying and selling mineral water balloons that his father filled at the Maroussi springs," writes the sports performance expert. Roger Robinson.

At the Panathenaic Stadium on April 6, 1896, the hosts of the Olympic Games, the Greeks, were defeated in "their ancient disciplines": sprints, races and the triple jump. And real national disappointment reigned after a student from the American University of Princeton, Robert Garrett, beat two Greeks in the discus throw, "the most classic of all Greek sports."

After that defeat, the marathon in Athens gained the significance of the sports Marathon and Thermopylae together. Before the race, people went to churches en masse to pray for victory.

On the last day of the Games, at exactly two in the afternoon on Easter Monday, April 10, 1896, there were a total of 17 participants at the starting line of the first Olympic marathon in history - 13 Greeks and four competitors of other nationalities.

The first 15 kilometers of the plain Spiridon Lewis ran at an even pace and fell behind. About 11 kilometers from the finish line, in the suburb of Kipermi, he stopped for refreshments. Legend has it that he entered the tavern to ask for a glass of red wine, but the Greek media unanimously claim that his girlfriend Jelena gave him half an orange, and his future father-in-law gave him a glass of cognac (or maybe it's metaxi?).

Anyway, refreshed with an orange from the girl's hand and a glass of drink from the hands of the future father-in-law, he examined the narrow road that climbs between the olive trees over a 200-meter hill, then goes downhill, and then follows a 50-meter climb through the Athenian suburbs.

Eleni shouted at him to hurry. He was in eighth place, and his competitors were far ahead of him. He said that he would "catch" them quickly. He knew the hills over which he carried water to his father's customers like the back of his hand.

Frenchman Albin Lermusiak left the race at the 32nd kilometer.

In the final stage, Lewis was third, behind Australian Edwin Flack and pre-race favorite Athens law student Karilaos Vasilakos, who began to pass out on the next climb.

Two kilometers later, the water carrier Spiros passed the Australian Edwin Fleck, who had already won the 800 and 1500 meter races, and was in the lead in the previous eight kilometers of the marathon.

Having never run such a long course before, Fleck could not overcome the hypoglycemia attack at the 36th kilometer, which we know today as the "marathon wall". He finally crashed at kilometer 37. They had to "revive" him with a mixture of eggs and cognac.

And in the streets of Athens, crowds of people cheered for a guy with a thin pointed moustache, who wore the number 3 on his white waistcoat - it was the water carrier Spiros, who was plodding forward at his seemingly slow, steady pace.

photo: wikipedia. org

THE DAY THE KING TORED HAT

A little before five in the afternoon, while people were nervously looking at their watches, a major rode up to the stadium and reported to King George I.

"What does he say, what does he say?", people nearby asked.

Someone shouted: "Greek! Greek!”

The whole stadium started chanting Ελληνικά! Ελληνικά!

A cannon announced that the runner was entering the last kilometer. When Spiridon Lewis, the water carrier, ran into the Panathenaic stadium for the friends of Spiros, 60.000 people jumped up and down, so, as the "Independent" wrote, it seemed that the whole hill was in motion. Thousands of hats were in the air. People pulled out small Greek flags from their pockets, kissed them, waved them so much that they flew into the sky. Olive branches and flowers rained down from the upper layers. And in the royal box, a figure in uniform waved his military cap so hard that the visor in his hand fell off. It was the king, who turned into a part of the crazy, happy, happy crowd.

Crown Prince Constantine and Prince George jumped onto the track and in uniform, with caps and monocles, carrying decorative sabers, ran around Louis in the final lap for the last few meters and escorted him across the finish line.

He finished the race in 2 hours, 58 minutes and 50 seconds, seven minutes ahead of the favorite Harilaos Vasilakos, who in the qualification race before the Games ran the road from Marathon to Athens in three hours and 18 minutes. Of the 17 competitors in the marathon, only nine crossed the finish line.

Prince Constantine and Prince George took Louis in their arms to carry him to the royal box, where the king greeted him with the damaged cap in hand.

THE FAR-RANGE SIGNIFICANCE OF ONE RACE

John McAloon, a professor at the University of Chicago, Coubertin's biographer and an authority on the Olympic Games, suggested: "Without Spyridon Lewis, the Athenian Games would have had no epic hero, no central symbol to summarize and express so richly so many ideological, sociological and historical themes. Coubertin found his most powerful ally in a peasant from Marussia. Indeed, Louis can fairly be said to have created the modern Olympic Games, more than any other man except Coubertin”.

In the opinion of the Spanish historian Fernandez Peña, who investigates how the Olympic value system functions in the current social context, the case of Spiridon Luis shows "the potential of sport to generate contemporary mythologies, to strengthen patriotic pride and thus to strengthen the national brand, but above all , to serve as a social elevator for people of very humble origin".

Some historians claim that in 1892, during a congress of representatives of 11 nations, various princes and counts at the Sorbonne, Coubertin tactically used the amateur condition only as bait for the upper Victorian class, in order to more quickly achieve his real goal - the reintroduction of the Olympic Games, in the belief that sport should be internationalized in order to develop.

In 1894, the IOC voted that only amateurs should be allowed to participate in the Olympic Games. The participation of professional athletes was seen as a threat to the Olympic ideals of fairness and equal opportunity although, in practice, this measure only exacerbated the unfairness and social inequality of the Victorian period as only wealthier gentlemen could afford the leisure and expenses to attend the Games.

photo: wikipedia.org

RESTITUTION MASSAGE?
HVALA, I'M IN A HURRY, I HAVE A GIRL WAITING FOR ME...

Michel Breal presented Spiridon Lewis with the promised miniature, 15 cm high silver cup. As the winner of the first marathon at the first Olympic Games in 1896, Lewis was awarded a silver medal (gold medals were introduced later). He received the bowl with an antique motif from the judge.

At the closing ceremony of the Games on April 15, 1896, King George I told Louis to decide for himself what he would like as a prize. He decided on a horse and cart to transport water. He turned down many other offers, including one to become an "ambassador" of a famous Athenian barbershop in exchange for free shaves for the rest of his life.

The Spanish writer Javier Moro in his legend about the water carrier Spiridon Luis for "Pais" describes a scene, interspersed with magical realism, in which Luis immediately after the race accepted an "invigorating massage", although he was not entirely clear what such words meant. As soon as the masseur touched his feet, Louis jumped up, stood up and announced that he had to go. His girlfriend and her friends were waiting for him on the other side of the hill to celebrate his success. And he ran the way he came.

Like it or not, probably the most desirable gift for Louis was that Jelena Kontoi's parents gave their consent for him to marry their daughter.

He continued to live in Marusi, as a water carrier, and then as a village policeman.

In 1926, he served almost a year in prison for falsifying military documents in order to collect a pension to which he was not entitled. He was not helped by mass requests to be pardoned.

OLIVE BRANCH IN BERLIN 1936.

He was expected to compete in the Olympic marathon at the 1900 Paris Games and the 1904 St. Louis Games, but did not compete in either of them, nor in any of the new marathons.

In 1934, the IOC met in Athens and agreed, at the suggestion of the German historian and secretary of all sports organizations of the Third Reich, Karl Diem (Diem), to organize the carrying of the baton from Olympia to Berlin. But it quickly became clear that after 3200 km nothing would be left of the olive branch of peace, so it was agreed that the branch would be transported by air, and that the flame would be lit at the holy place dedicated to Zeus, Altis in Olympia and transported to Berlin with torches.

Lewis was supposed to be the first torchbearer, but at the age of 63, he was no longer capable of running long distances with a torch in hand.

Nevertheless, as an honored guest of the German organizing committee, he went to Berlin by train - which was the longest journey of his life. He was the guest of honor at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, about which Sergije Lukacs, himself an eyewitness of that event, writes in the essay "Erase Berlin" (NIN, 1972) that "with the tide of swastikas and black uniforms, they were a pale foreshadowing of horror." which Nazism sowed in Europe".

Dressed in a new one fustanel, a traditional Greek folk costume resembling a skirt, Spiridon Lewis marched into the stadium at the head of the Greek Olympic team, while, as he later recalled, "flowers rained down from the sky" and spectators and athletes chanted his name.

He presented the Nazi Fuehrer Adolf Hitler with an olive branch, a symbol of the peace of his ancestors. He gave a few polite interviews, went around Berlin in a gray civilian suit so as not to attract attention with his national costume - and returned home. A few weeks before the Italian troops invaded Greece, the winner of the first marathon, Spiridon Lewis, died in Marussia in March 1940 at the age of 67 from a heart attack.

During the Second World War, his family hid the silver cup of the first Olympic marathon winner in the tomato garden so that it would not be robbed or requisitioned, and after the war they kept it next to his grandfather's picture, purely as a sentimental value.

However, a few months before the 2012 Olympics in London, the cup is up for auction at a London house Christie's sold for £541.250 ($958.423), a world record auction price for Olympic memorabilia at the time. The cup was bought by the foundation of the Greek billionaire Stavros Niarchos, a competitor of Aristotle Onassis, and exhibited in a special part of the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

The memory of Spiridon Lewis is also preserved in the modern Greek language: some linguists say that someone who can run fast is said: έγινε Λουης (egine Lewis), became Lewis…