The Marathon

You can watch this sport in every country, almost every city and in front of your TV. Yes, I am talking about the marathon. The Marathon is a long-distance running event over 42,159 km. But was it a greek invention? Read and try to figure it out.

 At the Olympic Games the marathon is the longest Athletics discipline. It is made for everybody, a sport for the mass. Thousands of people are participating in these big running events and they are not only top athletes of the competitive sport. There are large quantities of marathons for every gender as age. And even at the Olympics the popular sport is practiced.

The distance might seem a little bit strange because of its uneven number. But there is a reason why exactly this distance was chosen. In the end of the 19th century people began to compete by running long distances. People liked to watch the exciting sportive competitions. In 1896 the first Olympic Games took place in Greece. Also the long-distance running became a category – it was named marathon. The athletes had to run a distance of about 40 km from Marathon to Athens. Later the distance varied because of the

city’s different local circumstances. At the Olympic Games in the year 1908 in London an English princess wanted to see the running athletes from her window in Windsor Castle. So, because of her wish the distance had to increase to 42,195 km. Some years later they defined this distance for every marathon event.

And that’s how the classic distance of a marathon was found.

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