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New Zealand Tablet, 12 September 1912, Page 47

An ex-Irish postman (says a Home exchange) created the surprise of the Stockholm meeting when he won the much-boomed Marathon, though he had precious little to spare over the other South African, who stopped for a few seconds to take a drink of water, and found he had stopped a trifle too long. The winner seems to have received more recognition, laurel wreaths, serenades, etc., than the winners of the other events combined, but should not the death of Lazaro, the Portuguese distance runner, lead to this absurd race being put down for ever. We all know that these recently revived Stadium games are copied from Greece, where distance running was a fetish and the winner a national hero, but in these days of electricity and aeroplanes we have no need to breed distance runners of the Spartan-type. - 0 .