LONDON 1908 The marathon that was not elementary

John Hayes is one of the few winners of the Olympic marathon who languishes in obscurity. Italy's Dorando Pietri crossed the line first but was subsequently disqualified for being helped over the line by officials - including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Hayes and the American team launched a successful protest just as Pietri was carted oft' to hospital. According to statements by the two officials who followed him round the course, the tiny Italian had been taking atropine and strychnine capsules during the race which may have accounted for his distressed state on entering the stadium and which almost resulted in him suffering cardiac arrest.

Not even a gold cup offered by then Queen Alexandra could

console him - nor a subsequent victory over I Jayes in New York.

"I thought the British were the masters of fair play. Well 1 spit on that because I know exactly what their understanding of the word is and it isn't what the civilised world believes it means," he said years later.

Pietri was even cheated in death. A man, who had stolen his identity, was given a virtual state funeral in Italy: the real Pietri was to die in 1942 and, because of it being in the middle of World War II. had a much lower kev service.

BERLIN 1936

Jesse holds up Adolfs Aryan idols

This was meant to be the crowning moment for Nazi leader and German Chancellor Adolf Hitler as he expected his Aryan race to show they were the best athletes in the world.

So imagine his chagrin as black sprinter Jesse Owens,

deemed by Nazi ideology to be non-human', won four golds -the lOOm, 200m, 4x100m relay and long jump.

It wasn’t as if he had come out of nowhere as Owens had broken three world records the year before and tied one in the space of just 45 minutes in a meet in the United States - not bad for a man who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day all his adult life.

While Hitler never handed out a medal to Owens he did acknowledge him from his box and later received him with other medal winners from the Games at the Chancellery -though of course not in front of the cameras.

However, as Owens remarked when he returned to the States he was obliged to get on buses at the back as blacks were not allowed to ride up at the front. Owens, like Pietri, went on to run against horses, opened a public relations firm

and was awarded the Medal of Freedom. He died of lung canceraged 66 in 1980.

MEXICO CITY 1968

Smith and Carlos, the gloved crusaders

American athletes Tommy Smith and John Carlos were outstanding 200m runners and proved it by taking gold and

bronze at the Mexico Olympics.

However, both men staged a remarkable protest on the medals podium. Both wore one black glove at the medals ceremony - 24-year-old Smith on his left hand Carlos, 23, on his right - and raised their arms in protest at the lack of rights for

blacks in the United States.

They also wore no shoes to reflect the poverty of blacks and beads as an image of the lynchingofblacks.

Their protest outraged the white head of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) Avery Brundage who had them stripped of their medals and

sent home.

But they inspired a whole generation of black athletes -even the silver medallist, Australia's Peter Norman showed solidarity by grabbing a sticker which stood for Olympic Project for Human Rights so he wouldn't look out of place on the podium.