For the first time, the complete history of the most famous race in the Olympic Games is presented in Olympic Marathon. Beginning with the legends of ancient Greece, this book traces the process of reviving the Olympic movement, including the establishment of the marathon—the only event specifically created for the 1896 Olympics. Following heroes such as Dorando Pietri, Emil Zatopek, Abebe Bikila, and Frank Shorter, the book includes a complete analysis of every Olympic marathon in the first century of the modern Games, as well as tales from the lives of the runners. The story of the long struggle to establish a women's marathon begins with a lone female who ran the course in 1896 and culminates with the dramatic victory of American Joan Benoit in the first women's Olympic marathon in 1984.