A complete history of the most famous race in the Olympic Games - the marathon. Beginning with the legends of ancient Greece, this book traces the process of reviving the Olympic movement, incuding the establishment of the marathon - the only event specifically created for the 1896 Olympics. Following heroes such as Dorando Pietri, Emil Zatopek, Abebe Bikila and Frank Shorter, the book includes a complete analysis of every Olympic marathon as well as tales from the lives of the runners. John Hayes, who won the race with the help of strychnine, 1936 winner Sohn Kee Chung, a South Korean forced to compete for Japan and Mamo Wolde, who won running on an infected toe only to end up as a political prisoner in Ethiopia, are some of the athletes featured. The story of the long struggle to establish a women's Olympic marathon begins with a lonely female who ran the marathon course in 1896 and ends with the dramatic victory of American Jean Benoit in the first women's Olympic marathon in 1984. Up-to-date, the book concludes with chapters on the races in Atlanta in 1996, including the closest finish in Olympic marathon history.