Marathons at the Olympics
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Marathon at the Olympic Games |
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Burton Holmes' photograph entitled "1896: Three athletes in training for the marathon at the Olympic Games in Athens"
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| Overview | |
| Sport | Athletics |
| Gender | Men and women |
| Years held | Men: 1896 – 2016 Women: 1984 – 2016 |
| Olympic record | |
| Men | 2:06:32 Samuel Wanjiru (2008) |
| Women | 2:23:07 Tiki Gelana (2012) |
| Reigning champion | |
| Men |
 Eliud Kipchoge (KEN)
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| Women |
Jemima Jelagat Sumgong (KEN)
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The marathon at the Summer Olympics is the only road running event held at the multi-sport event. The men's marathon has been present on the Olympic athletics programme since 1896. Nearly ninety years later, the women's event was added to the programme at the 1984 Olympics.
The modern marathon event was created and later refined through the Olympic competition. The idea of holding a marathon race at the first Olympics was suggested to Pierre de Coubertin by Michel Bréal. Based upon a popular myth stemming from the Battle of Marathon, in which Pheidippides ran to Athens from the town of Marathon, Greece to carry the message of a Greek victory, the 1896 course began in the town of Marathon and finished in Athens' Panathenaic Stadium – a distance of around 40 kilometres (25 mi). On April 10, 1896, Greek water-carrier Spyridon Louis won the first Olympic marathon in 2 hours 58 minutes and 50 seconds. The route between Marathon and Panathenaic Stadium was repeated when Athens hosted the 2004 Games.
The race distance varied from 40 to 42 kilometres (25 to 26 mi) in the early editions as it was typically based upon the distance between two points that the organisers felt were suitable. The 1908 London Olympics marked the introduction of the now standard distance of 26 miles, 385 yards (42.195 km). However, it was not until the 1924 Paris Olympics that this distance became the standard at the Olympics.
The Olympic marathon proved immediately popular in the Western world and quickly spawned numerous long-running annual races, including the Boston Marathon in 1897, the Tour de Paris Marathon in 1902, the Yonkers Marathon in 1907, and the London Polytechnic Marathon in 1909. Such marathons played a key role in the expansion of the road running movement internationally over the course of the 20th century.
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