Centro goes home devstated

Day Two - Easter Tuesday, 7 April, 1896

This was a great day for Australia. There were eight contestants in the 1500-metres event including two Greeks, but the favoured runner for the race was American, Arthur Blake. Although Frenchman Lermusiaux led early, in a diary entry by Flack following the race he stated:

"I made the pace all the way with the Yankee Blake waiting on me. As soon as I got into the final straight I went for all I was worth. He almost caught me in the first 30 yards, and we raced together for about the same distance, when to my relief, I felt that he was falling back and that I had him beaten. I finished up strong and fresh but he was quite done up."

Flack finished in 4:33.2, five metres ahead of Blake. Flack's victory was the first by a non- American in any track and field event at the Games.

Day Three - Wednesday, 8 April, 1896

Edwin Flack competed in the [team] lawn tennis competitions... They lost in the first round.

Better fortune awaited him in the 800-metre event against two other runners. Due to Lermusiaux's withdrawals, Flack, the "incomparable runner", won easily in 2:11.5 against a Hungarian and Greek runner.

Day Three - Wednesday, 8 April, 1896

Despite not having competed over a distance beyond 16 kilometres (10 miles) before, Flack was determined to try and win a third event.

The field was very strong with 25 runners, all but four were Greeks. The foreign runners were the placegetters: Flack, Blake, Lermusiaux and the Hungarian, Kellner.

The Greek nation was very keen to see one of their competitors win and large inducements were made. George Averoff offered a million dracmas and the hand of his daughter in marriage for any Greek runner who could win the marathon.

The race started at 2pm under difficult conditions, which meant that runners faced a gruelling test, running under a 'blazing sun'. The marathon field was led early by Lermusiaux with Flack second after 10 km. Flack gained the lead after 30 km, but was passed at the 34 km mark by the eventual winner, collapsing at the 37km mark.

The Greek victor, Spiridon Louis, was given a wonderful reception by the Greek people at the stadium. He was showered with jewellery and flowers as he headed for the finish line.

After collapsing, Flack was transported by carriage to the stadium and was visited by Prince Nicholas who ordered a drink of brandy eggnog to assist his recovery. It was of great coincidence that the aid provided by George Robertson to assist Flack in the marathon was V.W. Delves-Broughton - amazingly, a former student of Melbourne Grammar School.

Flack's consideration for the occasion is shown in a letter written to his family after the marathon:

"They tell me I have become the 'Lion of Athens'. I could not go down the street without having a small crowd of people following me on all sides. I could hear people talk Greek and have my name mentioned."

Michael Connor wrote:

From the diary of Edwin Flack of Australia, 1500m gold medalist in the Athens games of 1896:

"April 12, 1896. My mates and I took steerage from Athens around the southern horn of Greece including Olympia appropriately enough and have been without a wink for two straight days and nights, but no bother. In our frenzied joy at our results in Athens (I took a medal of gold in both the 800 and 1500 by our Lord!) it is wonder we remembered even to eat much less to sleep or rest. Our nights are filled with song and carousing and I must confess I may have stolen a kiss or two from a blushing Betty onboard. We're bound for Switzerland via Italy, there to run a 1000m race in which I hope to scrawl my name in the book of athletic history as one of god's greatest running creations. Time will tell and any man's another's equal on any day the sun shines, but god and the stars above know I'm fit and I've a will to make my name in this all-important kilometer."

"April 22, 1896. I live in squalor. The pigs who root and snort and grunt in the pen I pass each day on my way to Lausanne proper to beg enjoy far better provisions than I. Danny, Ian and Nick have long since returned to Perth, but I remain here, a man without a country, a lost soul, a disgraced being, an individual about whom it may be said, 'Perhaps no blighted spirit yet alive has suffered as has poor Ed Flack does now.' I was high and stout after Athens. I rode a draft that lifted me to the heavens and filled me with nothing but hope for Lausanne. But my soaring expectations met with devastation there in ways I cannot even now apprehend and barely can deign to convey to you, Dear Diary. I toed the line of the kilometer - Oh, the kilometer! The distance of the Gods! The one and true test of man! - I took my place there in lane 3 and dug in with my right and stronger foot determined to take my place among the immortals of my pursuit and confident of victory. But alas...the men who toed that line to my left and right cared not about Athens and the splendor of my results there. They, too, thought only of victory and perhaps were spurred to greater effort in hopes of adding sheen to their names by way of stolen glory. They wanted the skin of an olympic champion and I did nothing to deter them from that aim. The gun went off and the great Souledam of Africa shot from the start as if he himself were a bullet fired from that gun. My view of the track was immediately obscured by the jostling backs of 6 or 7 of my competitors and I struggled of an instant to keep pace. In a blink 400 meters were gone and still I could not make up ground, my pitiful legs plodding heavily beneath me as if each was weighted down by not two but 100 golden medals. With 800 meters gone I was so far in arears of the pack I began to contemplate leaping the fence that lined the track and taking refuge under the bleachers that lined its finishing stretch. My humiliation grew with every stride until at last I crossed the finish 6th among the combatants, dead last on history's scroll of honor. Why and how I'd come so low I didn't know. My head swirled. My lungs burned. My shame swelled greater by the moment, rolling over me like waves on the beach at Graincut Home where I never can return. The other runners would not look me in the eye. They knew as I did that I had failed the only test that ever in man's days would matter. And it rang in my head like a death knell: "The Post-Olympic Kilometer! The Post-Olympic Kilometer!" I knew standing there in the cinders of Lausanne that my fate was carried in the leaden chime of those words: The Post-Olympic Kilometer. It was my humiliation, my ultimate defeat, my spirit's death. Utterly devastated, I could not even dare return home.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Michael Connor wrote:

Edwin Flack of Australia, 1500m gold medalist in the Athens games of 1896

Ran a 4:33. Barely a decade earlier, Walter George had ran a 4:12 MILE, and now this clown was boozing it up over a gold medal from that joke of a competition, the olympics. Of course he lost his next race - there were probably professionals there. He was a nobody, probably not even in the world's top 1000 with his 4:52 mile equivalent. Shame on him, and on you for taking his diary seriously as if he were an actual world-class real athlete.

The olympic 1500 remained a joke for 20 more years until Nurmi showed up and managed to be as good as George. But it has never outgrown its joke status - usually it's a terrible sit and kick race of no real consequence, the winner rarely being the world leader over the distance.

In the far future, they will look at Centro's gold, but it will only make them say, how fast was he? So then they will look up his PB and laugh, and that will be their final impression of him. Some nobody who won a joke race but folded like a house of cards when shit got serious and people ran fast.