France chases two medals from the 1904 Olympics

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Wed, Apr 07, 2021 page16

France chases two medals from the 1904 Olympics
- AFP, MEURSAULT, France
It has taken 117 years, but long-distance runner Albert Corey might finally be nearing home, bringing his two Olympic silver medals with him.
Corey was declared an American by the organizers when he won silver in the marathon at the 1904 Olympics in St Louis, Missouri, but now the French want him, and his medals, back.
A local councilor in his home town of Meursault is seeking to correct the record, asking the French National Olympic and Sports Committee to press the issue with the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Clement Genty, a councilor, engineer and amateur historian holds up a faded black and white photo, in which Corey looks like an archetypal amateur in his oversized sleeveless vest, crumpled shorts and laced leather shoes. Yet this penniless son of Burgundian winegrowers collected what should have been France’s only Olympic medals of the 1904 Games.

Councilor, engineer and amateur historian Clement Genty points at copies of a picture of Albert Corey, double medalist at the 1904 Olympics, in Abzac, Southwestern France, on Wednesday last week.

Photo: AFP

“A beautiful story,” Genty said. “I learned of his existence in a newspaper and did some research.”
Corey was born in Meursault in 1878, the year that the village became the first in the Cote d’Or area to be hit by phylloxera, which ravaged the grape vines.

In 1896, Corey enlisted in the French army. There he discovered a talent for endurance running. He broke the 160km record in 1899, but on Jan. 2, 1903, he went absent without leave. A year later, he turned up as a strike-breaker in the huge Chicago slaughterhouses.
Getting into local athletics was not easy for a man with broken English who had arrived in Chicago, the Washington Times wrote in 1905, “practically a tramp.”
When he learned that the Olympics were going to be held on US soil, he said he had run the Paris Marathon in 1900. This was true, but he played on the confusion with the Olympic marathon of the same year to make people believe that he had participated in a much more prestigious event.
The ploy worked and he went to St Louis representing the First Regiment Athletic Association of Chicago.
As the St Louis Games were so hard and expensive to reach from outside North America, they attracted few international entrants. Corey would have been the only Frenchman.
“But he belonged to an American club. He was therefore considered American, according to the rules of the time,” Genty said.
These were the first Olympics at which gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded.
The marathon was run in the hottest part of a sweltering late August day over a hilly, dusty course that, because the race distance had not yet been standardized, was 40km long. With only one water stop along the course, more than half of the 32 participants dropped out.
On the other hand, Corey boasted: “I could have done one more lap.”
He crossed the line third, but the “winner,” Fred Lorz, was disqualified for hitching a lift in a car. Gold instead went to British-born American Thomas Hicks who, fueled by strychnine mixed with brandy, completed the course in 3 hours, 28 minutes and 53 seconds to beat Corey by six minutes. Corey was almost 13 minutes ahead of the bronze medalist.
Corey also won a silver with four Americans in a team that won a 32km relay — although he is not referred to as American in the records for this one, and the medal was assigned to a “mixed” team.
The media in the US was under no illusion that Corey was anything other than French.
They hailed the “success story” of this “Frenchman,” a “slaughterhouse worker,” who became the “New Star for Marathon.”
In October, 1908, the Buffalo Evening Times wrote: “It must be nice to train like Corey. The Frenchman who won the Marathon race declared that he owed his success to having trained on champaigne [sic].”
Olympic historians have long classified Corey as French, but his marathon medal is credited to the US and the IOC appears unwilling to change that.
“There is no question of changing the country to which these medals are awarded,” its press office said.
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