The 1904 Olympics: When the Games Became a Deadly Carnival

America’s First Olympic Nightmare Featured Poison, Deliberate Dehydration, and Human Zoo Exhibitions

In 1904, St. Louis hosted what would become known as the most bizarre and dangerous Olympics in modern history, complete with rat poison-fueled marathoners, racist spectacles, and athletes who literally hitchhiked through their events.

The summer of 1904 should have marked a triumphant moment for American athletics. Instead, it delivered a grotesque carnival masquerading as the Olympic Games. St. Louis had stolen the Olympics from Chicago through political maneuvering, tying the competition to their World’s Fair commemorating the Louisiana Purchase. What emerged was part sporting event, part freak show, and part unethical human experiment that nearly killed multiple athletes and left Olympic officials questioning whether some events should exist at all.

A Hijacked Olympics Born from Political Scheming

Chicago was supposed to host the 1904 Summer Games. The International Olympic Committee had made their decision, plans were underway, and everything seemed settled. Then Missouri’s political machine kicked into gear.

David Francis, former Missouri governor and World’s Fair organizer, had other ideas. He argued that since St. Louis was already hosting the massive Louisiana Purchase Exposition that same summer, nobody would bother traveling to Chicago for separate Olympic Games. With backing from President Theodore Roosevelt, Francis orchestrated what amounted to an Olympic coup.

Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, reluctantly moved the Games to St. Louis. He later admitted having “a sort of presentiment that the Olympiad would match the mediocrity of the town.” His instincts proved devastatingly accurate – de Coubertin didn’t even bother attending his own Olympics.

The decision created an immediate problem: the Games became an afterthought to the World’s Fair. Olympic events were scattered across nearly five months, from July through November, with most of the actual competition crammed into just five sweltering days in late August and early September.

When Almost Nobody Showed Up

International participation collapsed under the weight of expensive transoceanic travel and confusion about scheduling. Of the twelve countries that bothered sending athletes, the overwhelming majority of the 630 competitors were American – 523 to be exact. More than half the events featured exclusively American athletes competing against each other.

The numerical dominance led to the largest medal haul in Olympic history: 239 American medals, including several won by European immigrants who weren’t even U.S. citizens yet. Norway was still protesting the nationality of two wrestling gold medalists as recently as 2012.

Some athletes represented whatever team would have them. Marathon runner John C. Furla, a Greek immigrant and naturalized American citizen, somehow competed for both the Greek national team and the city of St. Louis simultaneously.

The Human Zoo Olympics

The World’s Fair featured extensive “anthropological exhibits” – essentially human zoos where indigenous peoples from around the world were displayed for white spectators’ entertainment. Olympic organizers decided to stage a special two-day competition called “Anthropology Days,” recruiting participants from these exhibits to compete in European-style athletic events.

James Sullivan, the Games’ chief organizer, presented this as scientific research. The official report claimed they wanted to test whether “the average savage was fleet of foot, strong of limb, accurate with the bow and arrow.” The competitions included traditional Olympic events like shot put and sprinting, plus specially created contests like pole climbing and mud fights.

The participants – described in official documents as “Africans, Moros, Patagonians, Ainu, Cocopa and Sioux” – received virtually no training or instruction. Most performed poorly, which organizers smugly cited as proof of white athletic superiority. The report concluded that indigenous peoples “proved themselves inferior athletes, greatly overrated.”

Sullivan declared the experiment would have “scientific value for years to come” and that it “proves conclusively that the savage has been a very much overrated man from an athletic point of view.”

De Coubertin called Anthropology Days an “outrageous charade” and predicted it “will, of course, lose its appeal when black men, red men and yellow men learn to run, jump and throw, and leave the white men behind them.”

The Death Race Marathon

The marathon on August 30th attracted the largest crowd – an estimated 10,000 spectators came to witness what became the most dangerous and absurd race in Olympic history. Thirty-two men started the 24.85-mile course in 90-degree heat with humidity that made breathing feel like drowning.

The course itself seemed designed to kill. Seven hills ranging from 100 to 300 feet high punished runners with brutal ascents over roads inches deep in dust. Cracked stone created treacherous footing while cars carrying coaches, doctors, and journalists drove alongside the athletes, kicking up choking clouds of dirt.

Chief organizer James Sullivan had deliberately limited water stations to just one location at the 12-mile mark. He wanted to “minimize fluid intake to test the limits and effects of purposeful dehydration.” The marathon had become an unauthorized medical experiment using Olympic athletes as test subjects.

American William Garcia nearly became the first Olympic marathon fatality when dust coated his esophagus and tore his stomach lining, causing internal hemorrhaging. Doctors later said he would have bled to death if left untreated for another hour.

The Cheater’s Practical Joke

Fred Lorz, a New York bricklayer who trained at night after work, started strong but developed severe cramps at the nine-mile mark. Unable to continue, he hitched a ride in one of the accompanying automobiles, waving cheerfully at spectators and fellow runners as he passed.

When the car broke down near the stadium at mile 19, Lorz felt refreshed enough to resume running. He jogged the final few miles and crossed the finish line first to thunderous applause. President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter Alice nearly placed the victory wreath on his head before officials discovered his automotive shortcut.

Lorz claimed it was all an elaborate joke – he’d never intended to accept the medal. The Amateur Athletic Union wasn’t amused and slapped him with a lifetime ban, later rescinded on grounds that he was “temporarily insane.” Lorz redeemed himself by winning the 1905 Boston Marathon using only his legs.

Rat Poison and Brandy: The Winner’s Fuel

The legitimate winner was Thomas Hicks, an Englishman representing a Cambridge, Massachusetts track club. His victory came at a horrifying cost that would have killed him under different circumstances.

At the ten-mile mark, Hicks’ two-man support crew took control of his race strategy. When he begged for water, they refused, instead sponging his mouth with warm distilled water. Seven miles from the finish, they fed him a concoction of strychnine and egg whites – the first recorded instance of performance-enhancing drugs in the modern Olympics.

Strychnine, commonly used as a stimulant in 1904, is what we now know as rat poison. The Centers for Disease Control calls it a “strong poison used primarily as a pesticide, particularly to kill rats.” Hicks’ handlers also carried French brandy but waited to gauge his condition before administering it.

As the poison coursed through his blood, Hicks grew ashen and nearly collapsed. When news of Lorz’s disqualification reached him, he perked up briefly. His trainers gave him another dose of strychnine and egg whites, this time with brandy. They soaked his body and head with warm water, which seemed to revive him temporarily.

Race official Charles Lucas described Hicks’ final miles: “Over the last two miles of the road, Hicks was running mechanically – like a well-oiled piece of machinery. His eyes were dull, lusterless; the ashen color of his face and skin had deepened; his arms appeared as weights well tied down; he could scarcely lift his legs, while his knees were almost stiff.”

Hallucinations and Human Wreckage

Hicks began hallucinating, believing the finish line was still 20 miles away. During the final mile, he begged for food, then begged to lie down. He drank more brandy but was refused tea. He swallowed two more egg whites and walked up hills he couldn’t run anymore.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch captured his arrival at the stadium: “There was not a semblance of the elastic spring with which he had started. He must have heard the uproar about him, but he betrayed no sign of it. He was past that. His lower jaw was hanging as in imbecility, his eyes stared blankly, but his pitiful expression didn’t change.”

Hicks’ trainers literally carried him across the finish line while his feet moved back and forth in a grotesque pantomime of running. Four doctors spent an hour treating him before he felt well enough to leave the grounds. His winning time of 3 hours, 28 minutes, and 53 seconds remains the slowest in Olympic history.

The Cuban Postal Worker’s Adventure

Among the field’s more colorful characters was Félix Carvajal, a Cuban mailman who’d raised travel money by demonstrating his running ability throughout Cuba. After losing everything in a New Orleans dice game, he walked and hitchhiked to St. Louis, arriving at the starting line in street clothes: white long-sleeved shirt, dark pants, and street shoes.

A sympathetic fellow Olympian found scissors and cut Carvajal’s trousers at the knee. During the race, Carvajal chatted with spectators in broken English, snatched peaches from strangers in cars, and stopped at an orchard to snack on apples that turned out to be rotten. The spoiled fruit gave him severe stomach cramps, so he laid down for a nap mid-race.

Despite these detours, Carvajal finished fourth – an remarkable achievement given his circumstances and the fact that eighteen of the thirty-two starters never finished at all.

African Pioneers and Wild Dogs

Two participants made Olympic history as the first Black Africans to compete in the modern Games. Len Tau and Jan Mashiani, members of South Africa’s Tswana tribe, had come to St. Louis as part of a Boer War recreation exhibit. The fair didn’t advertise that both men were actually college students.

As dispatch runners during the war, they were well-prepared for marathon distances. Tau might have placed higher than ninth if he hadn’t been chased a mile off course by wild dogs. Mashiani finished twelfth despite the overall chaos.

Bizarre Events and Strange Champions

The Games featured sports that seem almost fictional today. Tug-of-war counted as an official Olympic event, with six five-man teams competing as part of the track and field championships. The Milwaukee Athletic Club won gold after defeating the New York Athletic Club in the finals.

George Eyser became one of the Games’ genuine heroes, winning six medals in gymnastics – including three gold – despite having a wooden leg. Frank Kugler achieved something that may never be repeated, medaling in three completely different sports: wrestling, weightlifting, and tug-of-war.

The 1904 Olympics also marked the first and only appearance of “plunge for distance,” a diving event where competitors dove into water and glided as far as possible underwater without surfacing. It was the last time golf appeared as an Olympic sport until 2016.

Women’s Boxing and Archery

Out of nearly 100 events, archery was the only sport where women could officially compete. Six contestants participated, with 45-year-old Lida Howell of Ohio dominating both the Double Columbia and Double National rounds.

Women also boxed as part of the Olympic program, but their matches were considered exhibition events with no medals awarded. It would be 108 years before women’s boxing returned to the Olympics at the 2012 London Games.

Legacy of a Disaster

The 1904 Olympics nearly killed the marathon as an Olympic event. James Sullivan, despite organizing the debacle, later admitted the race probably wouldn’t return in 1908, calling it “indefensible on any ground, but historic.”

Officials destroyed the Games’ records in a 1914 fire at the Missouri Athletic Club that killed 38 people, making it difficult for historians to determine which events were officially Olympic versus World’s Fair exhibitions. The confusion persists today.

The racism embedded in Anthropology Days would influence American athletics for decades. James Sullivan, who organized both the Olympics and the racist experiments, later played a crucial role in stripping Jim Thorpe of his Olympic medals in 1912.

St. Louis had succeeded in stealing the Olympics from Chicago, but the victory came at a cost that nearly destroyed the Olympic movement itself. The Games had become exactly what de Coubertin feared – a sideshow that made a mockery of athletic competition and human dignity alike.

SOURCES: Smithsonian Magazine, Wall Street Journal, History, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Run, American Indian, Washington University
COVER PHOTO: Thomas Hicks (center) running in the 1904 Olympic marathon with supporters at his side. | Credit: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.