ABSTRACT
At the end of August 1904, thirty-one runners assembled in the newly built St. Louis athletics stadium to run the marathon in the third olympiad of the modern era.1 The games were inauspicious. There had been an acrimonious dispute between Chicago and St. Louis about which city should host them. On the insistence of President Theodore Roosevelt, St. Louis won, but the local organisation proved to be disastrously incompetent. No foreign country sent a proper team, and the games were virtually ignored abroad. The London Times devoted far less space to the whole of the games than to the Dartmouth yacht regatta being held at the same time. A man with a wooden leg won four gymnastics medals.
