As you might expect during this two-week period, the WSJ’s Eric Felten (“the man with the best job in journalism”) yesterday discussed the history of Olympic drinking.
He doesn’t include the story of Spiridon Louis, winner of the marathon in the first games of the modern Olympiad in 1896. That may be because Louis stopped at a taverna in the course of the race for a glass of wine, not ouzo, so perhaps that’s considered outside Felten’s remit.
On the other hand he does tell how swimmer Eleanor Holm Jarrett was busted for drinking champagne when she was caught drinking champagne (and shooting craps) with members of the press on the way to the 1936 Olympics. Avery Brundage, who had a somewhat sliding scale of ethics throughout his IOC tenure, axed her as a bad example, notwithstanding her being the great hope in the women’s 100 metre backstroke.
These days that latter fact would have outweighed any crime up to and possibly including capital offenses.
Anyhow, Felten, as is his wont, comes up with a couple of quasi-official Olympic cocktails. Both of which strike me as nauseating, but feel free to use them to test your own personal best in endurance.
The thing that left me gobsmacked was the opening anecdote, about another marathon, 1904 in Saint Louis. Seems Thomas Hicks was crapping out at the 19-mile mark, so his coach gave him a cocktail of cognac, egg whites and sulfate of strychnine. He got another dose closer to the finish.
What I want to know is: there were Olympic Games in Saint Louis?
Why?
P.S. Having just moved into a house in a vintage-1950s neighborhood in Bellevue, I find myself without connectivity at home for the first time in this millenium. Verizon doesn't seem to run DSL to this area and the cable couldn't be installed until next week. However, this being the metro Seattle area, I'm going native: this is being posted from a coffee shop with free wi-fi.
1 comment:
I'm pretty sure Eleanor Holm swam bare-breasted in a tank at the New York World's Fair three years later. Life Magazine published a half-page picture in which her bazooms had been crudely whited out (I don't think airbrushes had been invented).
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