Rata Auki!

The sun poured down at Marathon. To the right of the winding road, on hills where goats nibbled the brown grass, the rocks made sharp black shadows. To the left, a warm, slow spray varied the edge of the Aegean. Pheidippides, running toward Athens 22 mi. away, headed down the dusty road.

When Pheidippides staggered up to the city gates, announced that the Persians had been defeated and fell dead of exhaustion, he was lucky. In a modern marathon race, he would have failed to reach the finish. The 193 runners who left Hopkinton, Mass, last week had 26 mi., 385 yd.* between them and Exeter Street in Boston. A light wind fanned into their faces. Old Clarence De Mar, Keene (N. H.) school teacher, who has won the Boston Marathon seven times, waved to his friends at South Framingham. At Natick, a New York runner named William Steiner, who stepped along like a sprinter, was 200 yd. ahead. Up the long slope toward Wellesley College, Steiner slowed down and John Kelley of Arlington, Mass, and a pale, unhappy-looking Finn named Dave Komonen soon caught him. From the sidewalks, Wellesley girls waved to the runners who pass through their town in underclothes once every year--Leslie Pawson, last year's winner; cheerful Jimmy Henigan, winner in 1931; Paul De Bruyn, the furnace-man who trained for his victory two years ago by running up and down the back stairs of a Manhattan hotel.

Pawson got a cramp, walked for two miles, sighed and stopped. Henigan dropped out after 17 mi. and rode the rest of the route in an automobile. For 10 mi., over the long Newton hills, Kelley and Komonen held their lead together, Kelley gaining a few steps as they plodded up, Komonen gaining a few as they coasted down the other side. At Boston College Komonen pulled ahead. He had trained for the race by running 15 mi. a day on snowshoes. At Coolidge Corner, coming into Boston, his feet were still light and he began to sprint between the crowds roped off along the sidewalks. He was alone running down Commonwealth Avenue. He turned into Exeter Street as lightly as though he were trotting to catch a street car, whisked across the finish where he was timed at 2 hr., 32 min., 53 sec. He was sitting down to a plate of beef stew in the Boston A. A. clubhouse when the other runners arrived.

Like most marathoners, Dave Komonen is a small man, 5 ft. 6 in. He weighed 131 Ib. at the start of last week's run, lost 6 Ib. along the way. Four years ago he came from Kakisalmi, Finland to Ontario, where he is a carpenter in the Frood Mine, at Sudbury. When he finished second last year in the Boston Marathon--hardest and oldest (37 years) in the U. S.-- Komonen was asked if he would try again. Aloof and taciturn, he answered "Rata auki!" ("Clear the track!"). Last summer he won marathons at Washington and Toronto. Last week, before returning to the mine at Sudbury, he received a marathon winner's usual reward: a medal and a laurel wreath--presented to him by Boston's Mayor Frederick W. Mansfield.

* When the Olympic games were revived in 1896, a marathon race was included in the program. Most famed of modern races was that from Windsor Castle to Shepherd's Bush in the 1908 Olympics. The distance of the London run, some 4 mi. longer than the original, has been made standard.

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