Word: marathon
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...other runners sniggered when they saw Abebe Bikila turn up at the start of the Olympic marathon with no shoes. As a television camera scanned the scrum of athletes readying themselves for the starter's gun, a commentator asked: "And what's this Ethiopian called?" It was 1960, Rome. Africa was just shrugging off the weight of colonial rule and some sporting officials still doubted Africans were ready for the big time. A little over 2 hr. 15 min. later that myth lay shattered by the slight man wearing number 11, a member of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie's Imperial...
...occupier. Legend has it that he made his decisive move in the race just as he passed the Axum Obelisk, a towering stela that Mussolini had brought back from Ethiopia as war loot. Four years later in Tokyo, Bikila won gold again, the first man to defend his Olympic marathon title. This time he wore shoes...
...history, not much is known about Bikila. Perhaps there is little to know. A poor villager who faithfully served the Emperor and was coached by a charismatic Swede named Onni Niskanen, Bikila left neither piles of letters nor much insight into his own dreams and beliefs. After his twin marathon wins, filled with hubris and alcohol, his body betrayed him. He failed in Mexico in '68, was paralyzed in a car accident and died a few years later...
Believing that the world was in danger of becoming "a homogenous mass," marathon runner Mary K. Gadams set up an adventure company in 1996. The outfit, RacingThePlanet, was designed to "take people to some of the last remaining remote areas" of the earth. But since 2002, Gadams has been asking her clients to do it the hard way - encouraging them to compete in seven-day, 155-mile (250 km) foot races through the arduous terrain, blistering heat and frigid cold of the world's four largest deserts. Known as the 4 Deserts Race, the event takes in the salt plains...
...held a cracked mirror to humanity and saw the humanity in it. We're pitiable creatures, no doubt, and birth is just the first step toward death, but funny in our cruelties and yearnings. At least that's what this Beckett fan thought at the end of the Gate marathon, Laugh? I thought...