Mostly True

Looks like the srychnine was intended as a performance enhancing drug, but Hicks was carried over the finish line by his team, so he should have by rights been disqualified.

Some pretty crazy shit, all in all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1904_Summer_Olympics_–_Men's_marathon

Also, I believe the guy who finished first was disqualified for riding in a car for part of the race. I could be misremembering though.

In video form

Well now I have to watch the Pretty Good video again

They should add this alongside the regular marathon. Call marathon: Chaos mode

Asian Games 2026 in Japan will be the modern example

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260924/p2a/00m/0na/017000c

"We are sorry for your inconveniences, the competent people are all being trailed for corruption" 🍒

I would watch the shit out of this as a movie. Why isn't this a movie?

Or when Rachael Gunn failed to receive a single score on her dance.

It would be a fantastic comedy film, but could be seen as too far-fetched.

Correct he was riding with the car for nearly half the race, assuming Wikipedia is correct. I strongly recommend to read the Wikipedia article about this race, but this meme is a good summary of it.

Didn't the original Marathon runner, Pheidippides, die of exhaustion soon after? Maybe the organizers were trying to recreate history as understood in their time.

That fucking wild!

There's a joke about the rat race in there somewhere

"Based on a true story"

All you need

Ah, I was looking for Citation Needed in the thread

that wikipedia article is a work of art

I'm not a doctor, but I don't think that's how stomach lining works. Or else, people working in very dusty environments 40 h/week would constantly get stomach issues.

Jon Bois, an excellent and hilarious video essayist, did a video on this! Really good, and I recommend watching anything and everything Jon Bois makes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4AhABManTw

YES. Jon Bois is amazing

Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games organizers apologize for wrong anthem

Kuwait played the Borat anthem when a Kazakhstani shooter won an international competition there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariya_Dmitriyenko

not movie length but still quite good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4AhABManTw

Maybe he was so hungry he ate the dust

I mean I guess....

I just watched Coyote v Acme the other night, and that movie starts with "based on a true story." I can assure you that it was not.

Turns out that title card does not need to actually be true

Not having eaten in 40 hours, he saw a spectator eating two peaches. He asked if he could have the peaches, and the spectator declined. He then stole both peaches and ran away.

Lol

That was back when Olympians were Olympians, not the finely tuned, pampered sports professionals we see today! /s

So Canada, Mexico, and US competed as North America back then?

Boomers describing their way to school:

Of fucking course it was in St Louis, Missouri.

Technically, Game of Thrones is based on a true story, since it was based on the War of the Roses 100 Years War.

It doesn't mean "non-fiction." It just means the idea was based on something non-fiction.

From the wikipedia:

While Frederick Lorz was greeted as the apparent winner, he was later disqualified as he had hitched a ride in a car for part of the race.

Seriously go read the wiki, this post barely scratches the surface of the nonsense that went down

So do they spin a big wheel-of-fortune type thing to see who gets the rat poison, or do they give every competitor a cocktail of weird stuff, one of which also contains the poison?

I think there is a pretty good episode of the Dollop on it too.

From then until the end of the race, Hicks received several doses of strychnine – a common rat poison, which stimulates the nervous system in small doses – mixed with brandy and egg white.[3] This was the earliest recorded use of performance-enhancing drugs in the revived Olympic Games.[6] He continued to battle onwards, hallucinating, and was barely able to walk for most of the course. When he reached the stadium, his support team carried him over the line, holding him in the air while he shuffled his feet as if still running.[6] Hicks had to be carried off the track on a stretcher, and might have died in the stadium had he not been treated by four doctors. He lost 8 pounds (3.6 kg) during the course of the marathon.[6]

Yeah but he ran like 130 miles, then fought in a battle, and then sprinted another 26 miles.

Which is wild cuz they definitely had horses, and it’s a story from the 1800s

Other keystone sports episodes of The Dollop: Rube Waddel, 1908 New York To Paris Car Race.

Not after Fargo

Fool me once, Coen Brothers

I don't think I've heard the car race one.

They went the long way 'round.

The gas station had not been invented yet.

Are we sure the whole thing wasn't just a skit?

Today's major film studios couldn't handle it without fucking it up somehow. The 2000s/early '10s would have been the peak time to film this

I've never wanted something to be true more

I mean, give the fucking man some peaches.

Got to be millions of those bastards.

Is amazing that they ever did another marathon in the modern Olympics.

That said the Olympics are just a rich kids talent show at this point, with the possible exception of the generic outliers that happen to be physically perfect for their sport (Bolt, Phelps, etc).

What the fuck, this is hilarious!

Why hasn't anyone made a Death of Stalin style dry satire film from this!?

I don't watch the Olympics, but if shit went down like that today, I definitely would.

Unfortunately sounds like something humans would do. We really suck

This sounds like the kind of America that Republicans thought was so great that they want it back.

Game of Thrones is based on the War of the Roses, not the 100 Years War.

Thanks for the correction, my bad!