Olympic Cavalcade

THIRD OLYMPIC GAMES, ST. LOUIS, U.S.A., 1904 -37 Illrd Olympiad. It has been said that the two Kaffirs put up a brave show and that the Milwaukee Negro pushed Harry Hillman hard to it in the 400 metres Hurdles. I think, however, that the Marathon Race, in which there were 40 entries, of whom 3 I were actual starters, produced the most colourful personality in Felix Carvajal, from Cuba, the largest island in the West Indies. His running foreshadowed that -of Juan Zabala, who was the victor in the Marathon Race at Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., in 1932. In the St. Louis Marathon there were 17 runners from the U.S.A., 10 from Greece, the 2 Kaffirs .from South Africa, an Englishman, also from South Africa, and a lone man from Cuba. 'The Cuban did not win the race but his personality and the hardships he had suffered gave colour and substance to the whole picture. This Cuban, Felix Carvajal, was a postman from Havana, a tiny little fellow, whom the lusty American field events men looked upon as a friendly and amusing freak and for whom ·they cared accordingly when he finally fetched up in Missouri. No one ever knew how, or when, he had heard of the Olympic Games, let alone the Marathon Race in particular. But a rumour got around that he had been talking to his fellow postmen, to whom he had passed on the information that he was chucking up his job in Havana, to run in, and to win, for the sake of Cuba, the greatest long-distance race in the world. Then, having given up his job, came the problem of how he was to get to St. Louis at all, for he had literally no money, so he turned his attention to the question of raising funds. His first expedient was an old one, that of finding some means of attract– ing a crowd, which would admire his skill as a runner and have sympathy with his financial plight as the representative of his native land. . He collected his crowd by giving free exhibitions of running around the great public square of ijavana. He got the money of the crowd to finance his proposed trip by r:p.ounting a soap box at the conclusion of his running exhibition and then explaining the purpose for which he was training and the ·parlous state in which he, the representative of his country in one of the greatest races in the world, found himself. Thus did he rope in the pennies of sympathizers and patriots until he had enough money to help him on his way to St. Louis. He travelled via New Orleans. In that city he sat in on a game of dice and lost all the money he had raised and thence begged his way to St. Louis. There he was welcomed by the big-hearted athletes assembled, who had heard, vaguely, of his comi11g, and perhaps something, too, of the trials he had had to face on the road. .Owing to his poor financial circumstances and the disastrous gamble in whtch ?e had taken part in New Orleans, Carvajal had been subsisting on starvat10n rations until he reached St. Louis, where the great-hearted U.S.A. a~hl~tes. took charge of, at any rate, his sustenance. All the same the dtmmuttve Cuban was up against a stiff proposition. He was completely