The Long Run (7 page)

O
N
M
ARCH
13, 1919, Robertson was awarded the 1914-15 Star General Service and Victory Medals, which were given to those who had served in Gallipoli, Mudros, Lomnos, or the Western Egyptian Frontier. Regular medical examinations had found his wounds “soundly healed.” But his leg still troubled him.

That same year, he returned to London to apprentice and liaison with Fortnum & Harvey, a landmark establishment and one of his father’s company’s clients. As part of his recuperation, Robertson joined the Polytechnic Harriers running club in London. As at school, he was running for his own reasons, to strengthen his leg, not to be ranked or win prizes. But at some point he did set a competitive goal for himself: to run the marathon in the first post-WWI Olympics.
¹¹⁶

The word
marathon
came into English-language usage in the late nineteenth century, defining a footrace run on a set
course measuring twenty-six miles and 385 yards, or 42.195 kilometres. The word comes from a village in Greece associated with a significant battle of 490 BC, when the Athenians, though outnumbered, triumphed over the Persian Empire.
¹¹⁷

When the Olympics were reinstated in Athens in 1896, a marathon was structured from the Marathon battlefield to the Panathenaikon Stadium, rebuilt for the Games. It was a new addition to the lineup: the ancient Games did not have marathons, or any long-distance running, but instead featured
stades
, a stadium-length sprint, or
dolichos
, composed of 24
stades
.
¹¹⁸

But in the later nineteenth century, long-distance walking and running had become very fashionable in Britain and America with amateur distance racing and track-and-field events at schools and universities. Public contests were popular, and men placed bets on the distance one could cover by walking or run-walking for an hour, day, or week. This interest coalesced into a new sport called “pedestrianism.”
¹¹⁹

The activity, and its avowedly amateur adherents, meshed nicely with the ideals of the re-booted Games. Among other philosophies, de Coubertin sought a way to imbue social values through sport, to increase cohesion among athletes who practiced different sports, and to cleanse sport of commercialism and monetary goals (especially from athletes paid to lose).
¹²⁰

There weren’t even gold medals at the first marathon; only the top two athletes received medals, and they were silver and bronze.
¹²¹
(Some athletes were also awarded prizes of
porcelain pottery.) The 1904 Games introduced the practice of awarding medals to the top three athletes.
¹²²
This was now the ceremony of the post-WWI Olympics, held in the summer of 1920, in Antwerp.

Belgium was awarded the seventh Olympiad at an IOC meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, in April 1919. It was a political and moral gesture towards Belgium’s suffering during WWI. Antwerp itself was almost in ruins with much of its transportation infrastructure razed.
¹²³
This in turn affected the Games, which were remarkable for their poor standard of facilities (the running track in particular was pitted and rutted), awful weather, low attendance (few could afford the tickets, and the stands were eventually filled with schoolchildren who received free entry), and deficit (626 million Belgian francs).
¹²⁴

But they were held, and they boasted a record-breaking roster of 2,607 athletes. The 1920 Olympics also (at last) debuted de Coubertin’s Olympic flag of five rings, the colours of blue, yellow, white, red, and black representational of all the flags of all the nations, against a white field representing peace,
¹²⁵
first created and displayed in 1914 (de Coubertin had also created the Olympic motto,
Citius
,
Altius
,
Fortius
: Faster, Higher, Stronger, which would be formally adopted in 1924).

As host country, Belgium issued the invitations. Its former enemy nations—Germany, Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey—did not receive one. There was no dedicated athletes’ village; instead, the contestants were boarded throughout Antwerp, mostly in schools, sleeping on hard cots
with hay-filled pillows, excepting for a time the Americans, first confined to their transport ship, the last minute replacement USS
Princess Matoika
(a referent name for Pocahontas), until their protests over its inadequate facilities reached mutinous heights. They were delivered to their appropriate sport venues in open trucks, “cheered on by townspeople.” The program included aquatics, boxing, fencing, wrestling, polo, and the last appearance of tug of war (Great Britain won). Participants included 2,591 male and seventy-eight female athletes from twenty-nine countries, with New Zealand, Argentina, and Brazil participating for the first time as autonomous teams. A newly independent Finland, too, was competing under its own flag.
¹²⁶

Finland’s most acclaimed athlete was its returning long-distance champion, Hannes Kolehmainen. The genial “Smiling Hannes” was the first of the great Olympic distance runners and the first of the Flying Finns, the generation of Finnish long-distance runners who would come to dominate the sport for the next several Olympiads. The next rising star, Paavo Nurmi, who ran at a precisely timed mechanical pace, was just beginning his ascendency. Together he and Kolehmainen would help Finland earn an astonishing nine gold medals in track and field in 1920—equal to mighty America.

Kolehmainen himself had won three gold medals in 1912 in Stockholm. But he was modest in his victory, known for his gentleman’s attitude of humility towards his successes and generosity towards his competitors.

But, at Antwerp, if he looked for his contemporary rivals he would find only ghosts. In 1912, Jean Bouin of France had lost the 5000m to Kolehmainen by just 0.1 second, less than
half a metre in one of the most exciting Olympic races in history. George Hutson of Britain was almost as strong a challenger, winning two bronze medals.
¹²⁷
But they were not at the starting line in Antwerp. Bouin had died early in the war, on September 29, 1914, aged twenty-five; Hutson at twenty-four was even younger and had died even earlier, on September 14, in the Battle of the Marne. Hutson’s body was never recovered, testament that heavy artillery had proven equal to the task of completely erasing the human body.

It was a large field, with forty-eight athletes running. Seventeen nations were represented by bib number, but, because of Robertson, eighteen by citizenship. Most of the marathoners had qualified by racing in their home country, or using times from an official race in another country where they happened to be living at the time. They came from eleven European nations, Canada and the US, Japan, India, and a single entry from each of South Africa, Australia, and Chile.

Newfoundland was never a member of the IOC. It had no Olympic committee or equivalent national sports body to confirm Robertson’s amateur status and qualifications. He had simply and intrepidly travelled to Antwerp on his own, with an official letter (and entry fee) from the Newfoundland government:

[Extract from a telegram from Rurality London to Military, St. John’s, dated July 29, 1920.]

Ex. 497 Robertson wishes to represent Newfoundland Olympic Marathon Antwerp August 21st Estimated expenditure 30 (pounds sterling). He has been training for three months. Entries close July 31st. Please send instructions at once.

Which was done:

[Extract from a telegram from Military, St. John’s, to Rurality London, dated July 30, 1920.]

In answer to your telegram July 29th Robertson make necessary arrangements to assist entry pay expense charge this Department (Stop) Prime Minister [Richard Squires] sends to Robertson congratulations and good luck convey mine too report result.

In WWI, Newfoundland had fought as a nation. Now, Newfoundland hoped to compete as an Olympic nation. But the IOC, by its own rules, could not suddenly recognize Newfoundland and admit one of its athletes.
¹²⁸
Undaunted, Robertson found his friends from the Polytechnic Harriers running club, who formed the British Olympic team. They were three (some reports say four), led by an unknown, new British record-holder for the marathon, Arthur Robert Mills (a farmer),
¹²⁹
and the rules permitted one more, so Robertson was offered the remaining spot. Some form of gentleman’s agreement may have helped finesse this.
¹³⁰
He wore a race number for the NOC of Britain. Thus his perseverance was rewarded, and he was permitted to run.

The runners assembled in the newly built stadium (it was only finished after the start of the Games), which held the marathon’s start and finish line.

The date was Sunday, August 22, and the marathon was scheduled for 4:10 pm. The day was cool and damp, sometimes raining, which made parts of the route mucky. There was some slight delay, and the starter’s gun went at 4:12 pm.
The route looped outside Antwerp through several villages—including Wilrijk, Reet, and Waarloos—and then reversed. They ran past Eikenhof Castle and their turnaround was the Chapel of Our Holy Virgin of the Snow, patron saint of leprosy sufferers.

The route was fairly flat. At twenty-six miles and 992 yards, it was the longest marathon designed to date. (At that time there was no standardized distance, and each Olympic organizing committee crafted their own.)

Kolehmainen placed first at a record-breaking 2:32:35.8.
¹³¹

Thirty-three runners eventually followed Kolehmainen across the finish line before Eric Robertson finished thirtyfifth, at a time of 3:55:00, the last runner to complete the race. He was neither the only veteran nor the only former soldier to be running through his wounds. But he was probably the smallest man in the field.

Afterwards, the Harriers presented Robertson with a silver medal inscribed, “The Polytechnic Sports Club. Awarded to Eric Robertson, Olympic competitor 1920.”

Colonel R. J. Kentish, a fellow marathoner from the Polytechnic, wrote from Antwerp on August 31, 1920 (on letterhead of The Army and Navy Club, Pall Mall, London):

Dear Sir, None other than the fact that Robertson ran a very game race all through and declined to get into the ambulance which followed the Competitors in the Race although he was obviously suffering from the effects of his old wounds etc. In so doing he kept the Dominion’s and the Empire’s Flag flying to the end. Would you kindly see that the enclosed
¹³²
reaches him. Yours very truly.

Kentish had finished thirty-five minutes before Robertson, and was his nearest competitor.

The response from the Dominion of Newfoundland High Commissioner’s Offices, 58 Victoria Street, on September 4:

Regarding the entry of Mr. Eric Robertson for the Marathon Race recently held at Antwerp, I would now confirm the latest cable dispatched to you as follows: With reference to your telegram of July 30th Robertson finished course 26 miles in three hours fiftyfive minutes thirtyfifth out of fortynine runners
¹³³
stop winners time two hours thirtytwo and fourfifths minutes. Mr. Robertson has now returned to this county and wishes that the two letters enclosed, one addressed to this office and the other addressed to Robertson himself, may be forwarded to St. John’s to describe his conduct during the race in question.
¹³⁴

The Canadian team was much taken by Robertson’s desire to compete and offered to accommodate a Newfoundland athlete or athletes in 1924, in Paris, at a cost of $500 per person. But times were too hard in the Dominion, and the money could not be found.

Robertson’s performance, and perhaps his simple presence, had also impressed the IOC. Newfoundland received invitations to the Games in Amsterdam in 1928, and in Los Angeles (summer) and Lake Placid (winter) in 1932. “At the request of the International Olympic Committee invitations were also sent to Malta, Rhodesia and Newfoundland,” in 1928, and Newfoundland was number forty-three on
the 1932 list, according to official reports.
¹³⁵
But, again, Newfoundland’s post-WWI economic boom had faltered. The price of fish, the prime determination of the dominion’s fortunes, had fallen, and Newfoundland’s bad times simply rolled along into what the rest of the world would soon experience as The Great Depression. There were no financial means to respond to the RSVP with a positive answer. While the economy was bolstered by the Second World War, Newfoundland would join Confederation in 1949, becoming part of Canada. Robertson would be the only Newfoundland-born athlete to represent his native country at the Olympics.

116
One Newfoundland-born athlete had already competed in the Olympics: Robert Fowler, who ran with the American track and field team in 1904 in St. Louis. And in 1924, Newfoundland-born Harry “Moose” Watson would score the gold-medal-winning goal for the Canadian team at the Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France. But both these sportsmen, though Newfoundlanders by birth, had left the island very young and were members of other national teams. Only Robertson arrived at an Olympics representing the independent nation of Newfoundland.