1904 Olympic Games/The Marathon: Someone somewhere in the rarefied world of American distance running must have a sense of humour. They scheduled the US Olympic marathon trials this year for St Louis. Even funnier, they were run over a course similar to that followed by 32 runners in the third Olympiad of the modern era, in 1904.

But the men's race this time was a far tamer and less exotic contest than the one staged during the second Games of the new century. If someone was keen to celebrate a significant anniversary, perhaps they should have first researched the story of that race of 100 years ago. They might have decided to give the commemoration a miss and settle for Seattle instead. Anywhere, but St Louis.

The disastrous 1904 Olympic Games shouldn't even have taken place there. Baron Pierre de Coubertin had promised them to Chicago, but US President Theodore Roosevelt stepped in and sent them to the Midwest as an effective sideshow to the St Louis World Fair of that year, the one sung about by Judy Garland in the film, Meet Me In St Louis.

Rather like the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the 1904 event was the "No Show Games". Only 12 countries were represented because of the tension caused by the Japanese-Russian War.

Thirty-two athletes from five nations lined up at the start of the Olympic showpiece, the 26-mile marathon (the 385 yards hadn't been added yet). Only 14 finished. The race was held in the middle of a searing Midwestern summer's day over a dusty course.

Conditions were exacerbated by the use by officials of an extraordinary invention, the automobile. Excited by the prospect of trying out this new appliance, the suits took off in large numbers ahead of the runners, raising enough dust to leave one of the competitors at death's door and forcing the withdrawal of almost half the field.

And what a field! It included a five-foot Cuban postman, Felix Carvajal, who had lost his savings in a New Orleans poker game and who was "adopted" by the great Irish field athlete Martin Sheridan.

Albert Corey of France was determined to make up for his poor showing in the Paris marathon of 1900. When he wasn't running he was a professional strike-breaker.

Then there were the first two black Africans to compete in an Olympics, the Zulu tribesman Lentauw and Yamasani, participants in the World Fair. Of course, not everyone was delighted at the idea of black athletes running in an Olympic event, especially one taking place in a state where Civil War memories still festered.

Thankfully, the "good old boys" stayed home. Probably to keep out of the heat.

Providing the real pedigree were the winners of the three previous Boston marathons as well as an Englishman running in the US colours, Thomas Hicks, who had finished second in Boston that year.

The fifth-place finisher from the Paris games in 1900, Albert Newton, was also in the field. Newton was one of a number of Irish-born athletes competing that year for the USA.

Many chose to do so because they would not compete for Britain. They could not run for the country of their birth because it did not yet exist.

Some were members of the New York Irish Athletics Club, which had been established by Irish immigrants denied entry to the fashionable and exclusive New York Athletics Club because of their nationality.

The race itself threw up heroes and villains. One of the former was Carvajal, running his first marathon in the shoes in which he'd walked from New Orleans and a pair of trousers cut off above the knee by Martin Sheridan (discus gold medallist that year).

The little Cuban stopped to chat with spectators, came down with stomach cramps from some apples he'd raided from an orchard en route and still managed to finish fourth.

Another was Lentauw, who was chased off the course by a dog with obvious Confederate sympathies. Despite losing valuable time, he finished ninth.

The chief villain was Fred Lorz of New York. In the Olympic stadium the spectators had been waiting an interminably long time for the race to finish.

Finally, after three hours and 13 minutes, nearly a quarter of an hour more than the winning time in Paris, Lorz appeared. He crossed the finish line and was hailed as the gold medallist.

Alice Roosevelt, daughter of the President, was about to place his medal around his neck when he was exposed as a fraud. He had hitched a lift in a friend's car for 11 miles.

So if Lorz hadn't won who had? The crowd had to wait another 15 minutes to find out. With nearly three and a half hours gone, Thomas Hicks staggered into the stadium more dead than alive. He'd almost given up after 16 miles, but his handlers had forced him to continue.

He crossed the finish line with almost six minutes to spare over Corey. The Irishman, Newton, beat little Felix Carvajal for the bronze. His gregarious nature had cost the Cuban a medal.

Hicks - like the original marathon runner, Pheidippides - nearly paid for his exertions with his life. As soon as the race was over he was rushed to hospital, where he spent 24 hours on the danger list. Photographs taken at the time reveal a man in a total stupor. It didn't take long for the athletics world to find out why.

In order to keep him in the race his supporters had forced him to drink copious amounts of brandy laced with strychnine. Had he been competing today he would have been disqualified (he would, wouldn't he?). Thus ended the most bizarre Olympic race ever run, at least until the 1988 100-metre final in Seoul.

The modern Olympics may have us scratching our heads in honest bewilderment wondering about sports like synchronised swimming and rhythmic gymnastics, but the 1904 Games, which allowed themselves to be associated with such unsavoury spectacles as mud fighting, rock throwing, pole climbing and spear throwing contests between "costumed members of the uncivilised tribes" (Zulus, Sioux Indians, pygmies, etc), nearly brought the entire Olympic movement to a premature end.

By kow-towing to Teddy Roosevelt, a badly planned Games allowed itself to be hijacked by outside interests for reasons that had nothing to do with sport.

Of course, we're truly fortunate that it was never to happen again!