1904 Olympics: Worst Ever?

The 1904 St. Louis Olympics are legendary for their chaos, controversy, and unforgettable moments. Held from July 1 to November 23, 1904, these Games were the first outside Europe and became infamous for bizarre events, lack of international participation, and a marathon so wild it included cheating, strychnine, and a runner who took a nap. In this episode, we explore the athletes who defied the odds, the marathon’s madness, and the lasting legacy of one of the most unusual Olympics ever. From Archie Hahn’s sprinting dominance to George Eyser’s inspiring gymnastics feats, discover how the 1904 Games shaped sports history.


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Speaker 1: Picture the Olympics that is nothing like we've seen today,

where countries don't show up, athletes nearly die from the heat,

cheating is rampant people or walking up from the streets

just to participate, and gold medals are won by a

guy with a wooden leg. And this is just a

little bit of what happened in the Third Olympics in

nineteen oh four that took place in Saint Louis, Missouri,

that is notoriously known as one of the worst Olympics

ever held. Join us today as we're going to dive

into what happened in this Olympics and how it changed

the Olympics forever today on Daily Sports History, let's go.

Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide

because I once yelled, ball, don't lie during a wedding ceremony.

So the first modern Olympics happened in Athens, Greece. It

was a great story bringing the world together in athletic

competition and linking back to history of ancient Greece. And

they made the decision to go to other places, not

just hold it in Greece. So they the next year

they went to Paris, not too far away from Greece

in Europe, and then they were like, okay, let's expand

even more, and they started to take bids. Like we

see the day where countries go to the Olympic Committee

and say, hey, you should come here for the Olympic Games.

And America really wanted to hold the Olympic Games. And

in May of nineteen oh one, the International Olympic Committee

awarded Chicago with the third Olympics to be held in

nineteen oh four. The thing is, Chicago never held the

Olympics because Saint Louis stole it from them. See, Saint

Louis was going to put on a World's Fair in

nineteen oh four. There's a big event celebrating the Louisiana purchase.

And the World's Fair is something that was going on

back in the day that was hugely popular. It was

an event where you built structures and were really trying

to show off all the things that your city could

do in showing off the technology and industrial advancements, and

back in the day, it was a big deal. They

started doing these World's Fairs back in the late seventeen

hundreds and they would have them across the world. Probably

the most noticeable one is the one they held in

Paris because that one they built the Eiffel Tower for

and it's still there to this day. And their structures

all over these world fairs that have continued to be

part of history, and they still have them. In twenty

sixteen they held one, but they're not as popular as

they were back in the day. Back in the day,

people would come from all around to see this because

the technology they were showing off was so advanced from

what they were used to at the time. And Saint

Louis was putting this on in nineteen oh four and

the Olympics was supposed to happen in nineteen o four,

and they didn't want to have these two huge international

events going on at the same time. Saint Louis thought

the Olympics would eclipse what they were doing for the Expo,

so they basically bullied Chicago into giving them the Olympics,

saying they would put on their own international sports competition

at the same time and they would pull the best

athletes to represent in their competition, basically making the Olympics obsolete.

And Chicago believed them, and they said, okay, you can

have the Olympics and the IOC actually approved it in

nineteen oh two. The transfer from Chicago to Saint Louis,

it's not that long of a drive and IOC good

nineteen oh three was a very different travel time. And

this would be the first Olympics held outside Europe. There's

only been two at this point. It's not like it

was crazy to have it outside there, but it was

also away from where the condensed countries were. Now Europe,

there's lots of countries right there, and you can get

twenty countries just in Europe to attend this event. But

in America we're far away from Europe. Canada's pretty close, Mexico,

you got some Caribbean countries as well, but it's harder

to get to for many countries, and that was one

of the biggest problems. Only thirteen nations hindered the nineteen

oh four Olympics compared to twenty six in the nineteen

hundred Olympics in France, so it was interesting. But they

wanted to make their mark and one of the things

they did that was unique is they decided to give

out medals for the winners, bronze for third, silver, for

a second, first place got gold. This is the first

time they ever did that, a tradition that we still

do to this day. And they actually designed the gold

medals to look like the Greek god Nike in honor

the very first Olympics. And they included some important events

that hadn't been done before, like boxing, wrestling in the decathlon,

as well as some unique events such as the dumbbells

in the tug of war. This was the first Olympics

to feature women in one event in one sport, and

there was only six total out of almost six hundred

and fifty athletes. This Olympics was confusing. It started on

July first and went till November twenty third. Normally the

Olympics last just a few weeks at most. This is

months going on during the World's Fair. So everyone was

just confused because the Worldfair was doing some sports competitions

that weren't part of the Olympics. So were you doing

an Olympic event? Was it a World Fair event? And

it made nations not want to travel and the travel

was hard. The quickest you could get there was a

five hour trip going from Europe to the edge of

America by steamboat, and then you still had to go

from New York to Saint Louis, which is not an

easy way to do it. You had to take train,

so cars weren't big. There were not planes at the time,

so you i had to go by boat and train

and it was a tough, tough road just to get there,

which is why so many people did not even show up.

They also had this thing called Anthropology Days where indigenous

and other Western people would compete in anthropologists contests, which

were racist. They were just racist, that's all. It was.

Indigenous people, black people from Africa that may not even

just been from Africa, they may just been former slaves

were in these events and just viewed as zoo animals. Basically.

It was very sad that this was acceptable at the time,

but there was a lot of positive things that happened

during this Olympics. Archie Han, who was known as the

Milwaukee meteor He won gold in the sixty meter, setting

a world record with seven seconds in the one hundred meter,

the two hundred meter, showing off his explosive speed. Then

Gym Lightbody would win gold in the eight hundred, the

fifteen hundred, and the steeplechase, and Harry Hillman would win

gold in the four hundred, the two hundred meter hurdles

and the four hundred meter hurdles, and ray Ewing would

sweep all the jumps, the high jump, the long jump,

and the triple jump, which he did also in nineteen hundred.

So this was not just these Americans winning because no

one else was coming. He was also doing it four

years ago. But they weren't the only ones, as German

swimmer Emil hanshu Rashi won three swimming goals. Matilda Scott

Holloway became the first woman to win three golds, dominating

the archery competitions, which is the only event that females

were allowed to participate. Frank Kugler remains the only athlete

to medal three different sports in one Olympic. He won

medals in wrestling, weightlifting, and tugawar and George Paige became

the first Black American to win an Olympic medal, taking

home bronze in two hurdle events, and interestingly enough, George Eisner,

an Olympian, won six medals, including three golds in gymnastics.

What made this even more special is he did so

on a wooden leg and for years would hold the

record for the most gold medals by a single Olympian,

but with a one event that stands out more than

any other event in this Olympics was the marathon, as

it is the worst marathon ever held in the history

of marathons. See they held it in the middle of

August when it's the hottest time in Saint Louis, so

it was already dangerous due to the heat it was

that day it was ninety degrees fahrenheit and they did

so on unpaved roads, dusty roads that were not roped off,

meaning there was still horse in bike car traffic going on,

kicking up dust as these runners ran, and there was

no regulations and as an experiment, they limited the water

for these athletes, giving them one water station at the

eleven mile marker. So all the athletes were deh exhausted

and actually did not even finish as they would have.

Seven nations represented t Swana in Lynn Taljan and Jan

Massani who were there part of the anthropology days and

just entered in whatever they were wearing and ran barefoot

during the event. Frederick Lores suffered from exhaustion and actually

hitchhiked in a car for eleven miles and jogged to

the stadium as if he had won, claiming it was

a joke, even though they told everybody he won and

later it would take it away. The true winner ended

up being Thomas Hicks, who was suffering from hallucinations during

it and nearly collapsed after his trainers gave him cetharsne,

which is a toxic stimulant instead of water. They were

just doing test on these guys, and he lost eight

pounds during the race. He was barely conscious when he

made it. And Felix Carnejwal was a Cuban mailman who

ran in street clothes with a great mustache and actually

stopped to snack on apples from an orchard and took

a nap during the race. But well, it's good enough

to finish fourth. This race deserves its own episode at

some point because it is insane when you dive in

deep But it's really what these Olympics were known for,

showing that it was not so much putting on the

best Olympics, it was just getting events to go. It

didn't matter. But despite these flaws, it still set some precedent.

It gave us the gold, silver and bronze that we

still used to this day, and the Francis Field that

they built in Washington University for the Games is still

around to this day and celebrated for when they hosted

the Olympics. But what it did for us majorly was

give us an idea of what not to do for

the Olympics, as Saint Louis was not focused on hosting

the Olympics itself. They just did not want the World's Fair,

which had been around longer than in the Olympics, to

be overshadowed. And now I don't even know what the

World's Fair is. In the Olympics is one of the

most watched sporting events in the world every four years.

The question is it better to learn from a bad

Olympics or build on a good one. I want to

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