Remembering Tom Longboat's legendary Boston Marathon run
Record-breaking 1907 victory paved the way for a unique career
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Born in 1887 on the Six Nations Reserve, near Brantford, Ont., Tom Longboat was sent to the Mohawk Institute — one of the residential schools where children from First Nation communities were often mistreated. As a teenager, Longboat escaped and went to live with an uncle. "I wouldn't even send my dog to that place," he later said of the school.
By 1903, Longboat's talent for distance running was well-known and he was living and training at Toronto's West End YMCA. His big breakthrough came in 1906, when he won the prestigious Around the Bay Road Race in Hamilton, Ont. by three minutes. That set the stage for the race of his life.
By the time of its 11th running in 1907, the Boston Marathon was already a pretty big deal in distance-running circles. And a Canadian had already won it three times — Ronald MacDonald in 1898 and Jack Caffery in 1900 and 1901. Caffery broke the Boston record in '01, and his time still stood when Longboat showed up six years later. According to a Boston Globe story from that day, 102 athletes started the race (compare that to 30,000 these days) and only 53 finished — none more brilliantly than the 19-year-old Longboat.
Despite suffering from a cold and dealing with what that newspaper story described as "chilly winter weather," including rain and sleet, Longboat won the 24.5-mile race (the original Boston distance) by a minute and a half. He also set a new record of 2:24:24 — shattering Caffery's mark by nearly five full minutes.
Longboat impressed the writer of that Boston Globe story with not just his time, but the grace with which he ran it. After calling Longboat "the most marvelous runner who has ever sped over our roads," the reporter continued: "With a smile for everyone, he raced along and at the finish he looked anything but like a youth who had covered more miles in a couple of hours than the average man walks in a week."
On the heels of that stunning performance, Longboat was among the favourites to win the 1908 Olympic marathon in London. That event was where the now-standard distance of 26.2 miles (42.195 km) was first introduced so that the race could start at Windsor Castle and end with a lap around the Olympic stadium, with the king and queen watching the finish from the royal box.
Longboat stayed in the lead pack through 20 miles before collapsing for reasons that remain unclear. Some who dealt in racist stereotypes accused Longboat, throughout his career, of excessive drinking and laziness — the latter because he liked to mix long walks in between his hard training runs. That was unorthodox at the time, but slow "recovery" sessions are now considered a vital part of any good distance runner's regimen.
After his Olympic disappointment, Longboat turned pro and was able to cash in on a brief period where an odd, boxing-like version of marathon running became popular with sports fans and gamblers.
In December 1908, some 16,000 fans packed Madison Square Garden to watch Longboat and Italy's Dorando Pietri (a favourite in New York City's Italian-American community) race head-to-head for 262 laps around a cinder track in the deafening, smoke-filled arena. Longboat beat him to become the de facto marathon champion of the world, then successfully defended the "title" by defeating England's Alfie Shrubb. He lost it a couple of months later in a six-man outdoor race at New York's Polo Grounds dubbed the "Great Marathon Derby," won by France's Henri St. Yves.
In 1916, Longboat volunteered for the First World War and served as a message runner in the trenches of Europe. At one point, he was erroneously reported killed in action, causing his wife to remarry. Upon returning to Canada, Longboat worked a few different steady-paying jobs (including as a garbage man in Toronto) and had four kids with his second wife, Martha. The couple moved back to the Six Nations Reserve before he died in 1949.
If you'd like to know more about Tom Longboat, read this story by Roger Robinson for Canadian Running and this story by Malcolm Kelly for CBC Sports. Both pieces helped inform today's newsletter.
