The first of five clues. Each one below gives a little more away.
I am named after a battle, not a race.
A messenger supposedly ran me and then dropped dead. He probably never existed.
My exact length was fixed in 1908 so a race could finish in front of a royal box.
Forty-two kilometres and one hundred and ninety-five metres.
Boston, Berlin, London, New York.
Marathon
Those extra 195 metres exist only so the 1908 London race could finish in front of the royal box. Every runner since has paid for that view.
The first modern Olympic marathon, in Athens in 1896, was about forty kilometres, and the distance drifted from games to games. London in 1908 fixed it by accident: the course was laid from Windsor Castle to the stadium and then extended to finish opposite the royal box, giving twenty-six miles and three hundred and eighty-five yards. That figure was formally adopted in 1921 and never revisited. The legend of Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens and dying appears centuries after the battle and contradicts the earliest account, in which he runs to Sparta instead — a far longer way.
Reading five clues at once is not the game. In the real thing they arrive one at a time and every wrong guess costs an hour. Play mystery #12 · today's mystery · the vault
Previous: mystery #11. Next: mystery #13. Or try #32, #33, #34, #35, #36, #37.