When the International Olympic Committee unveils their choice for host city of the 2016 summer Olympic Games, the winner will undoubtedly have a contigency of people on hand that start freaking out like Ed Werder when he gets a text from Brett Favre.  The reaction is fueled by the realization that their city just entered into a very exclusive club alongside some of the most prolific cities in the world. 

Being the host means money spent on new developments, millions and millions of dollars as a result of tourism and an injection of pride into the residents whose hometown is set to become the center of the sports world for two weeks.   Residing in a city that has or will host the Olympic Games should be a badge of honor.

Unless of course you happen to be from the city that butchered the games worse than any other in "modern" times. 

Such is the case for residents of St. Louis, host city for the 1904 Summer Olympics otherwise known as one of the biggest clusterf**ks in sporting history. 

As we celebrate Beijing's 2008 Games, allow us to take a very special trip in the Sports Delorean back to beautiful St. Louis, MO - long before a 600 foot curved piece of steel became the symbol of the city - and have a look at the special attributes that made the 1904 Olympics so utterly forgettable.

At Least the Parade of Nations was Short
Probably the least concerning aspect of putting on an Olympic Games in the 21st century is the athletes showing up. Barring a massive boycott, they're going to be there. They have to be.

If you spend your entire youth learning how to dive off of a 30-foot tower while perfectly in sync with the dude next to you, then you pretty much have no choice but to set your sites on the Olympics because what the hell else are you going to do with that talent?  And let's not just single out sychronized diving.  Probably 50% of the events are ones that are basically exclusive to the Olympics in that absolutely no one pays attention to them for the three years in between. 

So long as NBC or some other network continues to shell out billions of dollars to televise the Olympics, athletes will come. 

The same wasn't quite the case 104 years ago.  Of the 680 competitors, roughly 500 of them were American with another 50 being from Canada.  It wasn't really a shock to see that the United States took 244 of the 269 medals at the Games.  While the absence of Europeans meant extremely limited competition, it also helped establish a new tradition - the sport of talking smack. 

And this time it wasn't even by another athlete.  Charles JP Lucas, the author of the official 1904 Olympic Record was none to pleased with the decision by the Euros to skip the Games and he wasn't shy about it:

"Neither France nor England were missed from the Games of 1904 and its doubtful indeed if a single Frenchman could have finished fourth in any of the events"
 
See, calling the French out for being pansies was even popular 100 years ago. 

Pageantry, Tradition and a Little Racism for Good Measure
As a precursor to the actual Olympic Games, the organizers held a friendly little competition they called "Anthropology Days" where they forced Native Americans, along with people representing tribes from Africa, Japan and South America who were in for the 1904 World's Fair to compete in random athletic events so that anthropologists could see how they compared to the white man.

It was basically an excuse for American newspapers to print headlines like this one found in the LA Times:

"Great Fun For Savages. Untutored African Pigmies will throw mud."

Nothing embodies the spirit of competitive sport like forcing "savages" to compete in events they've never seen so that you can make fun of them. Hard to imagine why so many countries hate Americans. 

Pandering to Early 20th Century Meatheads
For all the weird sports that populate the Games today, in 1904 there were only 16 that were officially part of the sanctioned events.  Of those perhaps the most intriguing from a sheer meathead standpoint was the Tug of War.  Rather than pit country versus country (since there were only a few countries there) it pitted Athletic Clubs from various American cities against each other. 



In the end, the gold went to the Milwaukee Athletic Club with the silver going to something called "Southwest Turnverein of St. Louis No. 1".  The latter only won their medal because the New York Athletic Club skipped out on the silver medal and bronze medal games.  I guess an athletic club can only take so much rope burn in one Olympics. 

If they ever decide to bring Tug of War back in some capacity, Milwaukee could once again have the dominant team by running Prince Fielder and CC Sabathia out there.  The other team could have a Ford F-150 as it's anchor man and I'd still bet on those two.

Not Quite "World Class" Competition
We've established that not many foreign athletes made the trek to our fair city in 1904 and a reasonable person can deduce how that would have an effect on the level of competition for most events, but it shouldn't affect things that much.  

Based on the success of American George Eyser, one has to assume that the Europeans were the dominant force in the field of gymnastics a century ago.  That's the only way to explain how Eyser won six medals while competing with a wooden freaking leg.  The guy won the gold medal in rope climbing, parallel bars and in the vault which, if the event resembles today's version even a little bit, entails sprinting towards an inanimate object and hurdling yourself into the air.  Forgive my ignorance but all of those things would seem difficult when your leg got severed by a train and was replaced by a piece of maple. 

Either the competition was a shade too thin in some events or George Eyser was the baddest man ever to wear the stars and stripes. 

And to think, Paul Hamm withdrew because of a hand injury.  Suck it up, nancy. 

No Bob Costas
There is no doubt that the vocabularies of the people attending the Games were not nearly as developed as they would have been had Mr. Costas been born 150 years ago. 

26 Miles of Pure Chaos
Of all the forgettable happenings in what is largely considered the worst Olympic Games in modern times, the marathon was one event which has gained its share of attention throughout the years.  On a 95+ degree day in the streets of St. Louis, the race didn't share a whole lot in common with the marathons we see today where Kenyans run 26 miles in like 45 minutes.  Instead it had it's own unique stories. 

There was the story of Felix Carvajal who was a five foot tall mailman from Cuba who raced in work shoes and cut off dress pants, spent roughly 60 minutes during the race on the sidelines talking to random spectators yet still finished fourth. 

There were two Tswana tribesmen known as Len Tau and Yamasani who were on hand as part of the Boer Exhibit at the World's Fair when they were called in to run, becoming the first black Africans to ever take part in the Olympics.  Yamasani finished 12th and Len Tau finished 9th, although in his defense he did alledgedly have to run a mile out of his way to avoid a dog that was chasing him. 

A guy named Fred Lorz actually threw in the towel early in the race, hopped in a nearby car and headed towards the finish line.  When the car broke down en route, he got out and ran the rest of the way, passing the leaders and ultimately entering the stadium where the finish line was located to a roaring ovation from a crowd that thought he was the winner.  Like any stand up Olympic athlete, Lorz went ahead and pretended that he was the winner, even going so far and to nearly accepting a medal from President Teddy Roosevelt's daughter before he got ratted out. 

While all that was going on the eventual winner, Tom Hicks, was stumbling his way through the course with the help of his trainers, who actually carried him across the finish line.  Before they decided that picking him up was the best option, the trainers tried several methods to rejuvenate their boy including mixing a performance enhancing drink that included French brandy, egg whites and strychnine sulfate. 

Rumors are that Gatorade has dabbled with a similar mixture for their next G2 flavor.  

---

Considering the outcome of the 1904 Games, I'd say that it's a pretty safe bet that St. Louis isn't going to be getting the Olympics anytime in my lifetime.  But not many people can say that their city played host to the to the single most jacked up Olympic games since they were reintroduced in the late 1800's.

Suck on that, Beijing.