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World History (from Wikipedia the free encyclopedia)
Although marathon sometimes refers to any athletic event requiring great endurance, more specifically it refers to a long-distance track event of 42,195 m (26 miles and 385 yards).
The name "marathon" comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek soldier who, according to legend, ran from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon, on arriving in Athens, Pheidippides he shouted, "Rejoice, we conquer!" and then dropped dead of exhaustion!!
There is no evidence that any such event took place: and according to the Greek historian Herodotus, Pheidippides in fact ran from Athens to Sparta. In fact, the story didn't appear in print until the second century AD, over 600 years after it was alleged to have occurred. The legend that he ran from Marathon to Athens was invented by later writers and appears in Plutarch's On the Glory of Athens in the 1st century AD.
The length of a marathon was not originally standardized, since all that was important was that all athletes competed on the same course. The exact length of an Olympic marathon varied depending on the route established for each venue. The International Olympic Committee estimates the distance from the Marathon battlefield to Athens as 34.5 km (21.4 miles). The first and third Olympic marathons were 40 km (24.85 miles).
In 1894, when an international revival of the Olympics was being discussed, French linguist and historian Michel Breal suggested the inclusion of a long-distance race of 40 kms (24.8 miles) . Invoking the legend of Pheidippides, Breal and Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, presented the idea to the Organizing Committee of the Athens Olympics. The Greeks immediately agreed to it and got cracking.
On April 10, 1896 the first Olympic marathon was held from Marathon Bridge to the stadium in Athens. 17 runners took part and best of them was a 24-year-old named Spiridon Louis, a shepherd boy who served in the army as a messenger. Running with shoes donated by his fellow villagers, Louis took the lead four kilometres from the Panathenaic Stadium and won the race in 2:58.50 seconds, more than seven minutes ahead of second-placed countryman Chanilaos Vasilakos.
The 1908 Olympic marathon in London was originally set to start at Windsor Castle and end at Olympic Stadium, but the race organizers chose to have the runners finish in front of the Royal Box. This made the distance 42.195 km (26.2 miles). Of the 6 Olympic games between 1900 and 1920, there were 6 different distances, including 2 new distances after the British games in 1908.
A fixed distance of 42.195 km was adopted in 1921 by the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) as the official marathon distance.
Since then, many athletes, like Emil Zátopek, Ethiopian Abebe Bikila and Joan Benoit Samuelson, who earned her place in history as winner of the first Olympic women's marathon in 1984, were inspired by Louis to run the 42.195 kms course.
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