He won the 1904 marathon on strychnine and brandy

Thomas Hicks won the Olympic marathon of 30 August 1904, in St. Louis, Missouri, on two doses of strychnine sulphate — rat poison, used back then as a stimulant — dissolved in egg white and washed down with brandy. His own handlers gave it to him, in full view of everyone and without breaking a single rule: doping was not banned in Olympic sport until 1967. Hicks crossed the line held up by two men, his feet dragging, and it took him an hour before he could speak.

The race set off at three in the afternoon, at 32 degrees, along dirt roads churned up by the officials' cars. James Sullivan, who organised those Games, had allowed a single water point at kilometre nineteen: he wanted to study the effects of deliberate dehydration. Thirty-two runners started and fourteen came home.

Before Hicks, in came Fred Lorz, welcomed as champion and about to take the prize from the hands of Alice Roosevelt, the president's daughter. Lorz had covered eighteen kilometres in his coach's car and started running again when the engine gave out. He said it was a joke. He got a lifetime ban, had it lifted eight months later, and won the Boston Marathon the following year.

Fourth was Félix Carvajal, a Cuban postman who turned up to run in street trousers cut short with a pair of scissors. On the way he stopped to eat green apples from an orchard, they disagreed with him, and he had to lie down in the ditch. He still overtook people in the second half. William Garcia was found unconscious, the lining of his stomach shredded by the dust: doctors reckoned another hour and he would have bled out.