Distance marker from the original 42195m presented to Marathoneum Berlin

Paco Borao, President of the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races, handed over a mile marker from the 1908 Olympic Marathon to the Mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey, who in turn entrusted it to the curator of the Marathoneum Berlin, Gerd Steins.

It is a rare physical relic of the race that defined the Marathon distance as 26 miles 385 yards (42195m). The 18-mile marker, a cast-iron fingerpost sign, surfaced at a car boot sale in the north of England two years ago. Graham Webster knew what he had bought and took it for valuation on the BBC programme ‘The Antiques Roadshow’ but on the programme expressed the feeling that the sign really belonged in a museum.

AIMS approached Webster who agreed to sell the sign but this was when the covid pandemic made travel problematic. Even in 2022, with restrictions lifted, the sign needed especially careful fully-couriered transportation due to the brittleness of the cast iron. It was delivered to Berlin several weeks before the Marathon with a view to making the presentation at the race.

The marker was in fact placed 8.2 miles into the course, at 18 miles to go and bears the ‘5-diamond’ emblem of Polytechnic Harriers, the club given the task of organising the race. Such signs were used for the entire length of the course but the only one previously known still to be in existence was the “25 miles” [to go] sign at Eton.

What makes the length of this particular race, signposted in both miles and ‘kilos’, so important was that it eventually became fixed as the Marathon standard of 26 miles 385 yards or 42.195 kilometres. Before then marathons had usually been approximately 25 miles (40km) but could vary considerably in length. Why this race became so significant was due to the dramatic finale which played out on the track inside the White City stadium in West London.

The Italian Dorando Pietri, who had led the race from 24 miles, collapsed repeatedly and was ‘assisted’ to his feet by race referee Jack Andrew before a last dash to the finish line. He got there 32 seconds before the American, Johnny Hayes, but the Americans protested and Hayes was awarded the victory. Public sympathy was with Pietri and Queen Alexandra, who had witnessed his desperate last-lap struggle, awarded him a special commemorative cup.

The race stoked a marathon frenzy and ‘re-runs’ attracted huge betting interest. Pietri and Hayes met up in many different locations in the following years, both indoors and outside, where the only constant was the distance they had to run. In 1924 the world governing body of the sport, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF, now World Athletics), formalised the Marathon distance as that run from Windsor to White City in the 1908 Olympic Marathon.