Spiridon n°0 - February 1972
"April 1896. The first modern Olympic Games are about to end. 25 athletes have gathered in Marathon..."
MARATHON is a small village with pretty white houses, clustered around the church. Erected in the public square, a monument commemorates those who fell during the war.
Downstream, a vast plain covered with olive and orange trees. It was there, according to mythology, that a raging bull lived, the monster slain by the hero Theseus. And in the plain stands the tumulus erected in memory of the 192 Athenians (ironically, the helmet of Miltiades, their leader, is on display in the museum of Olympia) who perished there around 490 BC.
"The riders are at the start. Mostly Greeks, but also the American Blake, the Australian Flack and the Frenchman Lermusiaux. The Greeks are driven by an implacable will to win. To win in order to 'save the honor of the fatherland'."
"The competitors are accompanied by riders tasked with ensuring the fairness of the event. Flack, Lermusiaux, and Blake take turns leading. No Greek in the lead? Nervousness is rising among the 70,000 spectators filling the stadium..."
This is the ancient Panathenaic Stadium, designed by Lycurgus in 350 BC and rebuilt for the occasion in 18 months. Everything is made of magnificent Pentelic marble, from the white hill that overlooks the plain of Marathon. "The first Olympic Games of the modern era are about to end. Not a single Greek victory!..."
"But we learn that Blake abandoned the race on the Spata plain. That Lermusiaux and then Flack also gave up. A Greek is even said to be in the lead, the tall and thin SPIRIDON LOUIS."
Some believe Louis was a shepherd; others think he took a temporary job as a postman to better prepare for the race. Whatever the truth, completely unknown at the start, Spiridon became a national hero in less than three hours (exactly 2 hours, 58 minutes, 50 seconds).
"HE'S COMING..." The crowd rose as one, in a thunderous roar of applause. "The crown prince and his brother rushed towards him," seized him, and hoisted him up to the marble steps, where the king stood, pale with emotion.
All the Greeks wanted to celebrate Spiridon. A hotelier immediately signed him up for meal vouchers for every day of each of the next ten years... "Seventeen runners reached the finish line, seven Greeks among the first eight. No one had died, they would do it again four years later, in Paris at the Croix-Catelan stadium."
(according to newspapers of the time)