During the latter half of 1908, America was gripped by a "marathon craze" inspired by the Olympic antics of Johnny Hayes and Dorando Pietri1. Communities around the nation staged marathon races for local talent. The South was not untouched by this phenomenon; New Orleans hosted a marathon race early in 19092. In Charleston, South Carolina, the local Y.M.C.A. cautiously considered doing something similar.
Early on, the idea of of putting on an actual marathon was discarded, because "only a few participate in that sort of athletic test. Again, experts agree that the 26 mile, 385 yards are too severe a strain on any but eager candidates for spiritual spheres."3 Certainly, they were overly concerned about the safety of marathon running, but the point about participation was valid. The Y.M.C.A. was trying to provide healthy sport for many youths, not just the few willing to train for a marathon. In the end, they decided to keep the marathon distance, but to have runners tackle it as a team rather than individually; i.e., a marathon-length relay. Such a relay retained the mystique of the marathon while keeping the amount each runners was doing down to a distance manageable by a casual young athlete.
The course chosen for the race went from Summerville to the Y.M.C.A. clubhouse in Charleston, a distance of 24 miles. Each team was to have 24 runners, one for each mile of the course. A runner could begin his mile when passed an eight-inch brass tube by the teammate preceding him. The winning team was the first to carry their tube through the doorway of Y.M.C.A. headquarters. As an added bit of drama, "a message of interest to the public" was contained in the tube, the message borne by winning team to be read by Charleston Mayor R. G. Rhett. The Y.M.C.A. had every intention of making the race an annual event, and a revolving trophy was furnished by James Allen & Company. The winning team would be awarded custody of the Allen Cup until the next year's race, and their name would be engraved on the Cup. Capturing the relay title three years in a row would earn a team permanent possession of the trophy.
It was a difficult race to organize. Four teams, from the College of Charleston, the Citadel, the Y.M.C.A., and the Porter Military Academy, were entered. The 96 runners representing these teams needed to be delivered to each of the 23 relay stations on the roads between Summerville and Charleston, as well as to the start at Summerville. Judges and timers also had to be transported around the 24-mile long course. Thus, a large number of automobiles were needed. Almost daily, appeals were run in he Charleston newspapers, pleading for the city's automobile owners to volunteer the use of their machines. Headlines announced the number of cars still needed. Articles declared that it was a matter of civic pride: "It is a poor sort of city that will not encourage clean amateur sports, and Charleston is not a poor sort of city by any means."4
Finally the logistics problems were solved, and early Saturday afternoon, December 5, 1908, a huge motorcade set out from the Y.M.C.A. building on King Street and headed toward Summerville, in all likelihood and even more exciting spectacle than the race itself. The start was scheduled for 3:00pm, but it was not until 3:25 that the lead-off men for each of the four teams were toeing their marks. The official starter, Mayor O. C. Sires of Sumerville, rode up on horseback.
"Are you ready?" called Mayor Sires from his saddle.Back at the Y.M.C.A. a crowd started to gather, occasionally informed as the race's progress by reports coming in over the telephone. Excitement grew. Finally, the anchor man for the first team came into view. It was Wigfall, wearing the red and blue of the Y.M.C.A. Over his shoulder was visible Klein of the Citadel. Wigfall dashed into the Y.M.C.A. building and his baton was handed to Mayor Rhett, who removed the message it contained and read it to the crowd: "Boost Charleston always and everywhere!" A cheer went up. Some five minutes after the Citadel team finished, the College of Charleston anchor man brought his team home in third place, with the Porter Military Academy team another minute back in fourth. The first annual relay was history.
The runners set.
"One, two, three!" The white handkerchief floated to the ground, and the big race was on!5
Of the four institutions that fielded teams in the original relay, the College of Charleston and the Citadel continued to participate every year the event was held. The Y.M.C.A. and Porter Academy each sent teams annually until 1918 and 1919, respectively. They were joined in 1909 at the second annual relay by teams from Fort Moultrie and the Charleston Navy Yard, which competed under the names Army and Navy.6 A Navy team made up of athletes from a destroyer force stationed at Charleston ran in 1921. Over the years, teams also appeared from the Medical College of South Carolina, the Baracas S.S., the Gregorian Society, the Knights of Columbus (with which the Gregorians had merged), The Monarch Athletic Association, the West End Athletic Club, and the Y.A.A. (a team made up of runners from clubs who couldn't come up with enough athletes to field their own teams.7
After the Y.M.C.A.'s victory in the inaugural relay of 1908, the history of the relay became one of domination by the Citadel. The cadets won the race six years straight, from 1909 through 1914, winning permanent possession of the Allen Cup as well as a second cup the Allen company donated under the same conditions as the first. The Y.M.C.A. claimed its second victory in 1915, breaking the Citadel's lock on the event. The "Y" came close to repeating in 1916, leading the race as late as the last half mile, when Baynard, the anchor man for the College of Charleston, flashed by his Y.M.C.A. rival and proceeded to build a ten-second lead on his way to the finish line. In subsequent years, though, the Citadel returned to pre-eminence, piling up another five straight championships.
With four to seven teams competing in the relay each December, a great number of athletes would suddenly go into training each Autumn. Each team would have as many men as possible practicing to that there would be a large pool of runners from which to pick the fastest two dozen on the day of the race. It's hard to say just how many runners were out there disrupting traffic and scandalizing pedestrians with their "very light running suits,"8 but newspaper estimates of 500 to 600 are probably high. Reports of up to 40,000 spectators lining the course are also almost certainly exaggerated; photos of the 1911 race fail to show any spectators even on Meeting Street right in Charleston.9
Less experienced runners could turn to the News and Courier, where advice on training, form, and pacing were given by Herman F. Bretthauer, physical director of the Y.M.C.A. No doubt each athlete in the field pored over the course description printed in the newspaper a few days before the race. This was before the era of paved highways, and road conditions between Summerville and Charleston were highly variable. The week before the race, a scouting party would go out, mark each mile, place arrows at the turns, and note the condition of the course. Their full mile-by-mile report was what ran in the paper, and a runner could find out ahead of time just what to expect in the way of sand, mud, and hills. To a 1991 reader, the earliest course descriptions seem more like directions to a secluded hunting lodge than a report on a highway route. By the time the last race was held in 1921, the portion of the relay route in Charleston County, the latter ten miles, was entirely paved with stretches of concrete, asphalt, brick, wooden blocks, and Belgian blocks. But in Dorchester County the best road surface was gravel.
It was the state of the roads closest to Summerville that prompted the biggest change that the Y.M.C.A. ever made in the relay. In 1910 the course survey team found the first seven miles of roads outside of Summerville to be almost impassable. It was decided to cut the length of the relay to 15 miles. Rather than also cutting the size of each team down to 15 men, the distance of 18 of the relay legs was reduced from one mile to one-half mile.10 The following year, the roads were good enough that the full Summerville to Charleston course could be run, but in 1912 the relay again had to be cut to 15 miles. The roads were in poor shape for several years after 1912, and apparently the Y.M.C.A. gave up on even trying to hold a 24-mile event. 1911 was thus the last relay run from Summervile; after that the race was run from Otranto with the first six men on each team running a full mile and the remaining 18 men running a half mile. Other small course changes were made over the years, such as when the finish line was moved to the intersection of Meeting and George Streets, but the distance remained 15 miles.
The relay was continued over the years, uninterrupted even by World War I. Interestingly, the Boston Athletic Association Marathon was canceled on account of the war; it was replaced by a relay. But after 1918 the Y.M.C.A. was no longer competing in its own race; they announced that their role in athletics was now purely promotional. In 1922 the articles pleading for citizens to volunteer their autos for use in the relay were conspicuously absent from the Charleston newspapers. Instead a little piece appeared in the Evening Post on December 4, announcing that the date of the race was being moved to February 22 in order to allow more teams to get their runners in shape. It was felt that only the Citadel and the College of Charleston had been able to field teams of fit athletes in the past. When February rolled around, there was no relay. A fourteen-year story was over. Racing in the streets of Charleston continued for a few years, with the Citadel, the College of Charleston, and other teams meeting in events such as the annual Thanksgiving Day two-and-a-half mile race. But after 1925 the College of Charleston no longer fielded either a track or a cross-country team, and the cadets at the Citadel grew increasingly indifferent to track and field.
Road racing in Charleston was not dead, but slumbering. Each April the city hosts the Cooper River Bridge Run, a ten-kilometer event that ranks as the second largest road race in the southeast. But because Charleston's running tradition is not uninterrupted, it is unlikely that any of the thousands of participants in the Bridge Run realize that they are treading streets traversed decades ago by fleet young men each carrying a gleaming brass baton.
Appendix I: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the subsequent "marathon craze"
The London Olympic Games of 1908 have been cited by many authors as a counterexample to the notion that the Olympics promote peace through friendly competition between nations. Anglo-American bickering that these Games was so open and intense that it began to overshadow the athletic events. Such was the situation when the marathon runners set out from Windsor Castle on a hot July 24 to cover the 26 miles and 385 yards to the Olympic Stadium.
It was an odd distance, neither an even number of kilometers nor an even number of miles. The race was in fact the longest Olympic marathon yet run. The start had been moved back to Windsor where the royal family could conveniently watch the runners toeing the mark. The location of the finish line had been similarly influenced, being placed directly under Queen Alexandra's box at the stadium.
The British entries all fell back early, and the first runner to enter the stadium was an Italian, Dorando Pietri. But Pietri was disoriented, suffering from the effects of having run 26 miles in the heat. He collapsed on the track, far short of the finish line. Officials helped him to his feet several times, but each time he staggered on just a little bit before collapsing again. Suddenly it became known that the second-place runner was Johnny Hayes, an American. The British sympathies were already with the plucky Pietri, and the prospect of one of the despised Americans taking the championship was too much to endure. Pietri was carried over the line a mere half minute before Hayes jogged across unassisted. The American team immediately filed a protest and Pietri was disqualified for having received aid during the race. Hayes was thus awarded first place and Americans also captured third and fourth place finishes. In recognition of Pietri's valor (and probably also to spite the Americans), Queen Alexandra awarded a cup identical to that given to the winner, Hayes.
Controversy and drama made this a famous race, creating a worldwide interest in the marathon. In the United States this interest was further enhanced by the sterling performance of the American marathoners. During the Autumn a series of professional marathons was established. These included rematches between Hayes and Pietri. Other notable marathoners such as Canada's Tom Longboat turned professional. There was also a proliferation of amateur marathons, and a renewed interest in established events such as the Boston Athletic Association Marathon. It is a measure of the influence of the 1908 Olympic Marathon on marathon running in general that years later, when an official length for marathon races was established, it was set at 26 miles, 385 yards, the distance run in London.
Appendix II: Results of the Charleston Relay, 1908 - 1921
1908
1. Y.M.C.A. 2:26
2. The Citadel 2:26 1/2
3. College of Charleston 2:31 3/4
4. Porter Military Academy 2:32 3/4
1909
1. The Citadel 2:20:53
2. U.S. Navy 2:22:03
3. U.S. Army 2:25:43
4. Y.M.C.A. 2:26:53
5. College of Charleston 2:33:34
6. Porter Military Academy 2:34:43
1910
1. The Citadel 1:14:30
2. U.S. Army 1:15:25
3. Porter Military Academy 1:16:37
4. Y.M.C.A. 1:19:10
5. Medical College 1:20:45
6. College of Charleston 1:20:50
7. Baracas 1:25:40
1911
1. The Citadel 2:19:30
2. College of Charleston 2:26
3. Porter Military Academy 2:26:30
4. Gregorian Society 2:27
5. Y.M.C.A. 2:27:30
1912
1. The Citadel 1:20:00
2. College of Charleston 1:22:00
3. Gregorian Society 1:22:04
4. Porter Military Academy 1:23:14
5. Y.M.C.A. 1:28:55
6. Monarch Athletic Association 1:30:00
Notes
- See Appendix I for an account of the 1908 Olympic Games marathon and its effects. Any good history of the modern Olympic Games will include a description of this race, but one of the best is in David Wallechinsky's The Complete Book of the Olympic Games. Dr. David E. Martin's The Marathon: Runners and Races is an excellent secondary source for information on the professional marathon circuit that flourished briefly after the 1908 Olympics, and other aspects of the "marathon craze."
- New Orleans Times Picayune, 22 Feb 1909. This race was only twenty miles long but it was billed as a marathon. It can be argued that it actually was a marathon, because no official marathon distance existed until the 1920s. However, most early marathons were in the neighborhood of 25 miles.
- Charleston News and Courier, 25 Nov 1909.
- Charleston News and Courier, 29 Nov 1908.
- Charleston Evening Post, 7 Dec 1908.
- The fourth runner on the Navy team of 1909 was listed as Nimitz. The researcher was not able to determine whether or not this was the future admiral, Chester Nimitz, who was a commander of submarines in the Atlantic as the time.
- See Appendix II for the performances of these teams. All times are given as they were recorded in either the News and Courier or the Evening Post. The 1910 time for the Porter Military Academy reflect a 3:45 handicap that was given to that team. The Evening Post reported that the same time for both West End A.C. and Porter in the 1917 race; the News and Courier did not run a post-race story that year.
- Evening Post, 8 Dec 1909; News and Courier, 23 Nov 1909.
- The 46th Annual Session, Porter Military Academy, Charleston, S.C., 1912-1913. pp. 34-35.
- Charleston News and Courier, 7 Dec 1910.
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