Sport: Marathon

A crowd of 75,000 persons, ranked along Philadelphia streets, stood on tiptoes and strained eyes to catch a glimpse of a 38-year-old typesetter running along the pavement. He had run 26 miles and more that day, and had beaten by long margin a field of 62 other road-pounders. He was winning the cruelest of all races, wherein strong heart and mickle courage are the fundamental prerequisites —the Marathon. And trailing behind the winner Clarence De Mar jogged blister-footed Olympic champion Albin Stenroos, Finn, who led De Mar by two places in the 1924 competitions— on that terrifically hot day the racers wilted like flies along the roadside. And behind him thumped other runners who thought De Mar was a has-been. The typesetter from Melrose, Mass., began his marathonic career at Boston in 1911; won two years in succession.

When, in 1922, he announced his entry in the Marathon* of that year, wiseacres ridiculed: “Out of competition nearly eleven years . . . This race is too hot for antiques!” But veteran Clarence De Mar won, has been winning with ironic consistency ever since. It is a strange anomaly that several aged Marathoners are still in competition; a 58-year-old finished the Philadelphia grind.

*A Greek athlete, Pheildippides, ran from the field of Marathon to Athens, to gasp, before falling dead, that the Greeks had been victorious over the Persians. Distance: 26 mi., 385 yd.