The Wildest Race Ever
The Story of the 1904 Olympic Marathon
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From Megan McCarthy the award-winning author of Pop! and Earmuffs for Everyone comes the quirky, fascinating, and inspiring story of perseverance and the importance of sportsmanship set at the 1904 St. Louis Olympic Marathon.
It was 1904 and St. Louis was proud to host the World’s Fair and America’s First Olympics. Hundreds of thousands of people came by car, by train, by boat. Part of the Olympics was a wild, wacky marathon. Forty-two racers registered, thirty-two showed up, and of the three racers vying for the finish line: on drove part way, one was helped by his trainers over the line, and one was a postman who travelled from Cuba and ran in street clothes that he cut off to look like shorts. How they ran and who won is a story of twists and turns that only wouldn’t be believed if it weren’t true! And it is! Find out who won in this wacky and well-researched picture book all about the historic Olympic Marathon of 1904.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With her signature narrative zeal and goggle-eyed characters, McCarthy takes readers to the first Olympic marathon in America, held during the St. Louis World's Fair. The vehicles trailing the pack kicked up dust that choked and blinded the runners. Cuban Felix Carvajal couldn't resist stopping for fresh fruit or practicing his English with cheering onlookers. South African Len Tau "was chased a mile off course by an angry dog." American Fred Lorz, first over the finish line, probably rode most of the course in a car. And Thomas Hicks, another American and the eventual official winner, was given a concoction of egg white and strychnine en route. Readers who have grown up with highly orchestrated sports events on TV may be surprised to learn just how slapdash, hazardous, and idiosyncratic early competition could be. But the story requires a marathoner's concentration to keep track of its 10 main characters, and the subject matter doesn't offer McCarthy the kind of meaty ambiguity that have made her previous works like Earmuffs for Everyone! so fun and compelling. Ages 4 8.
