Running into history
125 years and counting BAA Boston Marathon celebrates anniversary
On 11 October Boston Marathon celebrated its 125th edition. Although there were only fifteen competitors in each of the first two races the history of the Boston Marathon runs closely in parallel with the history of Marathon running itself. 1897: The Marathon had been invented as a distance race specifically for the first Olympic Games of the modern era held in Athens on 10 April 1896. Among the 18 starters in the race was Arthur Blake, a member of the Boston
Athletic Association. Although he retired at 23km he returned to Boston along with team coach John Graham and 100m and 400m winner Tom Burke full of enthusiasm for the new event. At their urging the BAA instigated an annual Marathon race to be held on Patriots Day, at that time fixed as 19 April (but after 1968 changed to the third Monday in April). The inaugural winner was John McDermott from New York in a time of 2:55:10. 1900: The first two editions of the race were
known as the American Marathon but as early as 1898 there had been a Canadian winner. In 1900 the Canadians made a clean sweep of the podium and in the following 15 years provided the winner on five occasions. Boston was overwhelmingly a US contest but individuals from Greece and Germany as well as Canada won inter-war editions of the race. After World War II overseas competition became more varied and much fiercer. Boston had to wait until 1957 for another American victory as 11 runners from seven different countries took the spoils. Distance Running | 2022 Edition 1
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