How Dorando Pietri Won the 1908 Marathon and Lost It Anyway

On July 24, 1908, the Olympic marathon was run from a lawn beneath the windows of Windsor Castle to the new White City Stadium in Shepherd's Bush, west London. The course was laid out so that the royal family could start the race and the royal box could see it finish. The distance came in at 42.195 km — 26 miles, 385 yards — a number the IAAF later froze, in 1921, as the official marathon length.

The leader entering the stadium was Dorando Pietri, a 22-year-old confectioner's apprentice from Carpi in northern Italy. He turned the wrong way coming through the gate. Someone redirected him. Then his legs went. Pietri collapsed on the cinder track, got up, ran a few yards, fell again. He fell five times in the final 350 metres. Each time, officials and doctors — including, by some accounts, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was covering the race for a London paper — helped him up.

He crossed the line on his feet, with two officials at his elbows, in 2 hours 54 minutes 46 seconds. The American team protested immediately. The judges agreed: Pietri had been physically assisted, which the rules forbade. He was disqualified. The gold went to the American Johnny Hayes, in 2:55:18.

The British public sided with the Italian. Queen Alexandra invited him to her box the next day and gave him a gilded silver cup, replacing the medal he had not been allowed to keep. Irving Berlin's first hit was an Italian-English novelty number called "Dorando." Pietri raced professionally for two more years, retired at 26, opened a hotel in Carpi that failed, and finished his life running a car repair shop in Sanremo. He died there in 1942.