To my running friends
(barefoot runners and not-so-barefoot runners alike):
I know that most of you have
read Born to Run (currently 14th on the New York Times
bestseller list) about the Tarahumara runners and the running shoe debate. A
while back I’d heard that some Tarhumara had once run in the Texas Relays, a
national track and field meet held on the UT campus each spring. I did a little
research and found an interesting story. From what I can tell, the first
officiated ultramarathon in the United States was a 90-mile run by Tarahumara
from San Antonio to Austin as part of the 1927 Texas Relays.
Think of this as a humble
sidebar to Born to Run. I’ll try to post it on the forums as well. Hope
you enjoy it.
Jim
A Tarahumara Run
through Texas
by Jim Nicar
Azure blue skies, mild temperatures, and a
steady north breeze greeted more than 10,000 spectators to the third annual
Texas Relays on March 25, 1927. Held at Memorial Stadium on the University of
Texas campus, the fledgling track and field meet had swelled from a few hundred
participants in 1925 to more than 1,000 athletes from two countries. An
intercollegiate division boasted squads from a dozen states and the University
of Mexico, former and future Olympians competed, 13 records were broken, and
the celebrated University of Michigan football coach, Fielding “Hurry Up” Yost,
served as the Head Referee.
Newspapers across the country lauded the
Relays as a tremendous success. But most of the attention was focused not on
the events in the stadium, but on the prowess of six Tarahumara runners from
the isolated Copper Canyon region in northern Mexico. Their debut in Texas was
the result of a series of events that involved the Olympic movement, Mexican
nationalism, and some savvy promotion for track and field.
~~~~~~~~~~
For the last two weeks in October, 1926, the
inaugural Central American Games were held in Mexico City. An initiative by the
International Olympic Committee, it was hoped that regional Olympic-styled
gatherings would promote greater interest and participation in the main Olympic
Games. Mexico was an agreeable host. After a 10-year, sometimes violent,
revolution from 1910 – 1920, both the government and citizens of Mexico were
eager to restore the country’s tarnished image. Though 14 nations were invited
to the Games, only three – Mexico, Cuba, and Guatemala – sent teams to compete
in baseball, basketball, swimming, fencing, track and field, and other sports.
The final event was a well-publicized 100km
(62 mile) distance race, and while it was officially a part of the Games, it
had to be postponed until Sunday, November 7, five days after the closing
ceremony. The race featured a pair of runners from the little-known and
reclusive Tarahumara villages from the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Starting at
3:05am in front of the city hall in the town of Pachuca, Tomas Zafiro and
Leonicio San Miguel made their way southwest to Mexico City, the pre-dawn road
lit by the headlights of police motorcycles, cars carrying reporters, and an
ambulance. Because the Tarahumara had their own native dialect and spoke little
Spanish, an interpreter ran alongside the other two for the first 75km and
relayed comments to the reporters. As the runners neared Mexico City, an
ever-growing throng of supporters crammed the route and impeded their progress.
Nine hours and 37 minutes after the start, the pair arrived in a packed
National Stadium, where they were swarmed by an ecstatic, cheering crowd, and
hailed as national heroes.
Each runner was awarded a crimson scarf, a
modern plow, and 30 yards of white cotton cloth. When asked to participate in
the race, Zafiro and San Miguel initially declined, as it would mean missing
harvest time for their corn crops, which they planned to exchange for 30 yards
of cloth. The issue caused the postponement of the race, until the governor of
Chihuahua volunteered to provide the cloth as a guarantee against any loss of
the harvest.
The distance race easily received more press
than any other event at the Games, and had the intended effect of both
promoting the regional Olympic movement and showcasing Mexican endurance
athletes. Soon after the race, the Mexican government petitioned the IOC to include
a 100km race in the upcoming 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam.
In the United States, the event was described
as “a race which has no parallel in sporting history,” and accounts were awash
with speculation. Some claimed Mexico was an up-and-coming athletic power, and
Zafiro a contender for marathon gold at the next Olympics. A Time
magazine reporter who covered the 100km race asked the runners how they were
able to traverse such extraordinary distances. Zafiro responded:
“We are strong because we live in the open
air…We eat, four times a day, frijoles and chili with tortillas. Also we like
deer meat, chickens, turtles, lizards, and rabbits. We chew peyote (grilled
corn meal with spices), and on feasts we drink pinole (corn-fermented beer). No
one of our tribe would eat the meat of any creature that fed upon another
creature. Reverence lends wings to the legs. Only thus can a man be happy.”
The New York Times ran a series of articles
on the Tarahumara, including one in January, 1927, which described them as cave
dwellers from the wilds of Hidalgo. “Civilization has barely touched them; they
are the unsentient children of the earth.” The article provided extensive – and
likely exaggerated – details of Tarahumaran beliefs and traditions. As for
their endurance, “Mexicans employ these Indians to run wild horses into a
corral. It may take two or three days, but the horses are driven in, entirely
exhausted, while the Indians finish almost as fresh as at the start.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Theo Bellmont, the athletic director for the
University of Texas in Austin, read the New York Times articles with
great interest, and mulled the possibility of bringing Tarahumara runners to
the Texas Relays. Bellmont and UT track coach Clyde Littlefield founded the
Relays in 1925, and hoped to create an event that would have national stature,
on par with the already established Penn and Drake Relays. If a 100km race
generated a media spectacle in Mexico, what might a longer run do in Austin?
Bellmont contacted longtime acquaintance
Enrique Aguirre, the Minister of Physical Education for Mexico and the head of
Mexico’s YMCA. (Bellmont had directed the YMCA in Houston before he was hired
by the University.) Aguirre was an easy sell. Having the Tarahumara race in the
United States would bring added exposure to the runners and strengthen Mexico’s
petition with the IOC. Though the Relays were scheduled for the end of March,
only a couple of months away, Aguirre agreed to send six Tarahumara, three men
and three women. To preserve their amateur status for a possible Olympic berth,
the runners would not be paid. Instead, a monetary donation was given to the
Mexican government to build new schools in some of the Tarahumara villages.
Plans were made for two races. The women
would run a traditional marathon distance of 26.2 miles that began in central
Austin, proceeded north to the small town of Round Rock, and then returned to
finish at Memorial Stadium, where the Relays would already be underway.
By itself, an all-female marathon would be a
sensation. The United States was enjoying the raucous “Roaring Twenties” and
women had not only won the right to vote at the start of the decade, but were
actively stretching the limits of longstanding social mores. Skirts with
hemlines above the knees, smoking in public, driving automobiles, and even
cheering at athletic events were considered new and daring, and would have been
branded “unladylike” and unthinkable behavior just ten years earlier.
Locally, while the University of Texas had
admitted women since it opened in 1883, co-eds still had to follow the strict
regulations found on most American college campuses. University administrators
were anxious to protect a lady’s “delicate constitution,” limited a co-ed’s
social outings to three times per week (that’s all they could stand), and
enforced a 10pm curfew most evenings. Sports, in small doses, were considered
healthy, but physicians generally advised against “undue physical exertion.”
Too much running and jumping might “break something” and deny a woman the
opportunity for motherhood after college. Some doctors were convinced that a
co-ed ought not to study during a particular time of the month, as it would
drain the body’s energies away from more important tasks. For the residents of
Austin, along with much of the country, the idea that three women could safely
attempt to run a marathon was counter to the prevailing social and medical
tenets of the time.
The men’s race would be even more astounding.
The trio of men would traverse an 82 mile (137 km) route from the Alamo in San
Antonio north to Austin, also ending at the UT stadium. Both races would begin,
as best as could be estimated, so that all of the runners would arrive at the
finish line at about the same time.
~~~~~~~~~~
On the last day of February, qualifying races
were held in Mexico to determine which Tarahumara would participate in the
Relays the following month. The women completed a 45km (27.9 mile) route, won
by Juanita Paciencia, in four hours and 56 minutes, followed by two sisters,
Juanita and Lola Cuzarare. The men ran 100km, and 38-year old Tomas Zafiro
bettered his time from the previous November by an extraordinary two hours,
finishing in seven hours and 35 minutes (about 7:15 per mile pace). Jose Torres
and Augustin Salido claimed the remaining slots.
Zafiro’s accomplishment only heightened the
anticipation of the Relays, and sparked a debate as to whether the runners’
athleticism was genuine. John Kieren, a columnist for the New York Times,
claimed doubters thought the Tarahumara “ran short miles and timed themselves
by phases of the moon. This time they will run a distance measured in English
miles and they will be timed by a split second watch, though…an alarm clock
would do just as well.”
As for the women, Kieren was even more
pessimistic, and compared their efforts to the Olympic marathon record, then
held by Hannes Kolehmalnen of Finland at two hours and 32 minutes. “That’s the
record that the three Tarahumara squaws will try to beat,” stated Kieren,
incorrectly. “There are plenty of conservative athletic observers who are
willing to bet a grand piano to a flat note that the Tarahumara squaws will be
as far from the record as Portland, Me. is from Portland, Ore.”
~~~~~~~~~~
As the week of the Texas Relays arrived, the
city of Austin found itself in the glare of an international limelight, and did
its best to welcome all of the athletes, especially their guests from across the
southern border. The Tarahumara were to stay at the Driskill Hotel, considered
the best accommodations in town. Lamp posts along Congress Avenue, the main
boulevard that extended south from the state capitol, were draped in colorful
bunting that alternated between the red, white, and blue of the United States
(or Texas), and the green, white, and red national hues of Mexico. University
president Robert Vinson announced that classes would be suspended on the Friday
afternoon of the race, and encouraged UT students to attend the Relays or line
the streets to support the Tarahumara runners.
Just before sunset on Tuesday, March 22,
three days before the race, six Tarahumara runners, two interpreters, and a
manager disembarked a train at the Austin station and were promptly overwhelmed
by curious Austin citizens, a bevy of reporters, and the inventions and
conveniences of the modern world. Steam-heated Pullman cars on the train, hotel
elevators, and phonograph recordings were all novel experiences.
Wednesday morning, the runners completed a
brief 5-mile warm-up at the stadium, and then spent the rest of the day either
relaxing at the hotel or seeing the sites of Austin. Contemporary appliances
were a constant interest; the group closely inspected the gas stove in the
hotel kitchen, and asked to see it lit to make sure “there was no trick about
it.” Dressed in their traditional attire of shorts, blouses, and sandals (and
shawls for the ladies), the entire group set off for an early evening stroll
down Congress Avenue. They stared at the dome of the state capitol, gazed in
amazement through the shop windows, and asked to hear another phonograph
recording. Followed everywhere by a crowd of reporters and onlookers, the scene
brought downtown traffic to a halt.
On Thursday, the men left for San Antonio and
studied the route they would follow back to Austin. According to local
newspapers, the runners “shook their heads dubiously” as they examined the
occasional gravel-strewn sections of the road. “Sandals will be worn on the
cruelest stretches, but the Indians prefer to run barefooted.”
Once in San Antonio, most of the day was
devoted to rest and final preparations. The three drank an herbal tea, likely
brewed from chia seeds. “According to Tarahumara tradition, the drinking of
this beverage gives the drinker speed,” reported the Austin American.
The men rubbed their skin with another herbal concoction, to ensure endurance,
and then “uttered certain lucky phrases,” to give their efforts the best chance
for success.
~~~~~~~~~~
In a scene very similar to the 100km race the
previous November, the Tarahumara men gathered in the middle of the night on
the steps of the San Antonio City Hall. The start line was changed from the
Alamo at the last minute, though it increased the route to Austin to 89.4 miles
(149km). Instead of their customary native garb, the three were outfitted in
white track uniforms with the tri-colored shield of Mexico embroidered on their
shirts. Around their waists they wore belts of small bells. The belts served a
dual purpose: the jingle of the bells helped to maintain a consistent pace
while running, and, as each belt had a unique tone, they allowed the runners to
know the whereabouts of their companions. The men carried four-foot long canes,
and as an added promotion for the race, one bore a written message of greeting
from the mayor of San Antonio to the governor of Texas in Austin.
The starting gun sounded at 3:19am Friday
morning. Headlights of support vehicles and the flash bulbs of numerous cameras
illuminated the way. The men completed six miles in the first 60 minutes, and
then gradually increased their pace to a little more than seven miles an hour.
A steady headwind, warm temperatures, and graveled roads were all challenges,
and as the sun rose over the central Texas landscape, the trio donned “wide
sombreros” to ward off the glare. Along the way, they peyote, oranges,
and frequently drank water from a ladle without breaking their stride.
Augustin Salido, the youngest of the group at
22 years old, began to suffer stomach cramps at mile 32. The others stopped and
walked for a while to see if he would recover. Still in pain, Salido attempted
to continue the run. According to the Los Angeles Times, “He stuck
gamely to the pace, running 27 more miles before collapsing. He was taken into
one of the official cars and had recovered by the time the race was over.”
The remaining runners, Tomas Zafiro, 38, and
Jose Torres, 24, continued on to Austin, attracting large crowds as they passed
through towns along the way. An increasing number of cars tried to follow
along, congested the highway, and created so much carbon monoxide exhaust that
race officials became concerned for the health of the Tarahumara. Motorists
were directed to keep their distance, but the growing logjam slowed the
runners’ progress to just four miles an hour as they reached the outskirts of
Austin.
In the meantime, the women began their race
at 11:30am in front of the downtown headquarters of the Austin American
newspaper. Clad in more traditional garments of loose, bright red shorts, white
blouses, red bandanas, and sandals, the ladies also sported bells and carried
canes. Thousands of Austin citizens turned out at the start and along the
course.
Early in the race, Juanita Paciencia, 15, had
trouble with her sandals and fell behind. After stopping twice to readjust
them, she discarded her shoes altogether and continued barefoot. But as the
temperatures climbed, the pavement became an issue, and at mile 24, Paciencia
dropped out of the race because the road was too hot. The warm weather also
affected Juanita Cuzarare, 16, who had led most of the way, but stopped within
sight of the stadium.
Fourteen year old Lola Cuzarare, the lone
finisher, entered Memorial Stadium, removed her sandals, and completed the race
in four hours and 42 minutes. As she approached the finish line, Cuzarare tried
to duck under the tape, unaware that she was supposed to run through it. She
continued running several laps, smiling to a noisy and appreciative crowd,
until Texas Relays officials stopped her and escorted her off the track.
Almost two hours later, at 6:12pm, Zafiro and
Torres reached their goal in 14 hours and 53 minutes. It was “a feat that would
kill an ordinary horse,” declared the Washington Post, but the pair
“finished apparently as fresh as when they started.”
Details of the races were printed in
newspapers as far away as South America and Europe, the government of Mexico
added to their IOC petition the request for a women’s marathon, and Theo
Bellmont was heralded locally as “putting Austin on the map.” But despite the
popularity of the Tarahumara, the IOC did not include a 100km race or a women’s
marathon in its 1928 Amsterdam games. Two Tarahumara runners, including Jose Torres,
represented Mexico in the men’s marathon, but as their training emphasized
distance over speed, they finished in 32nd and 35th
place.
Jim
Nicar
The
Texas Exes
512.471.8095
(phone)
512.471.8096
(fax)
