The marathon’s 42.195 km distance froze only in 1921
Marathons cover 42.195 kilometers on roads or trails, with run/walk and wheelchair divisions—and more than 800 races worldwide. Michel Bréal pushed the event into the 1896 Athens Olympics, inspired by Greek messenger legends that historians still dispute.
The legend says Pheidippides, fighting at Marathon in 490 BC, saw a Persian ship veer toward Athens, ran the whole way shedding weapons and clothes, announced victory to the assembly and died. Herodotus, the main source for the war, tells a different story: Philippides ran from Athens to Sparta for help and back, over 240 kilometres each way, and the Athenian army itself marched home the same day. The Marathon-to-Athens run first appears in Plutarch in the first century AD, quoting a lost work that names the runner Thersipus or Eucles, while Lucian's version is too tongue-in-cheek to trust. Browning’s 1879 poem cemented the popular composite. Mount Penteli forces a north or south detour; modern highways roughly follow the southern arc.
Pierre de Coubertin and the Greeks backed Bréal's idea, hoping for a crowd-pleasing echo of ancient glory. The southern route used in 1896 measured about 40 kilometres, while a steeper northern path over Mount Penteli is about 35. Spyridon Louis, a Greek water-carrier, won the first Olympic marathon on 10 April 1896 in 2 hours 58 minutes 50 seconds, and a selection race that March had been won by Charilaos Vasilakos in 3 hours 18 minutes.
Women first ran the Olympic marathon in 1984 in Los Angeles, where Joan Benoit of the United States won in 2:24:52. The 2004 Athens Games returned to the classic course, finishing at the Panathinaiko Stadium used in 1896, and Stefano Baldini's winning 2:10:55 stood as the route record until Felix Kandie ran 2:10:37 in 2014. The World Athletics Championships have included the race since they began in 1983, making it the only running road race in both championships. Most of today's entrants are recreational runners, and big-city races draw tens of thousands.
Source: Marathon
