Marathon
In a nutshell
Nicolas Debon's graphic novel about Boughèra El Ouafi, who won the 1928 Olympic marathon in Amsterdam and died forgotten and poor. A powerful story of the rise and fall of one of the great marathoners.
Who it's for: Fans of comics and marathon history.
Marathon. What is a marathon? Just a number. A number that became a concept thanks to the Olympic Games. It was made famous by the very first modern Games, held, symbolically, in Greece in 1896. The organisers loved the idea of a grand finale to the Games with a run from Marathon to Athens.
Pierre de Coubertin himself originally resisted the idea. After all, running 40 km was beyond the normal abilities even of amateur athletes. In the end he let himself be persuaded and the marathon was included as the last event (more in the book Dejiny behania). Those Olympic Games were a huge success. Jiří Guth-Jarkovský, one of the first twelve members of the International Olympic Committee, was thrilled too.
But back to the marathon. The long run of about 40 km inspired many runners around the world. Just a year after Athens, the first Boston Marathon was run (1897). The winners gradually became heroes. And this graphic novel, Marathon, by French artist Nicolas Debon, tells the story of one such unexpected hero. In drawn form he captured the Olympic race that started on 5 August 1928 at 3:14 pm in Amsterdam. 69 runners from 23 countries lined up at the start (including Czechoslovak Alois Krof, whose 2:43:18 was good enough for 16th place).
Nicolas Debon
The most important of them, however, was Algerian Boughèra El Ouafi, a worker at the Renault car factory, running in the colours of France, to which the colony belonged at the time. Unsurprisingly, he’s the winner of the race (in 2:32:57). He became the first African to win Olympic marathon gold.
Boughèra El Ouafi
I already wrote a short reflection on whether a classic book or a comic is better for telling a story in my review of Jindřich Janíček’s graphic novel B jako běžec (R for Runner). Here I have to take my hat off to the author. In his drawings he managed to capture a race many would find boring, along with its micro-dramas. Nicolas is an active runner. He felt the individual pains of running on his own body (headwind, cramps, fatigue) and turned them into drawings. What’s more, in sepia tones that evoke old print.
Emil Zátopek and Alain Mimoun
The book covers only that Olympic race. Still, at its end you’ll find a biography of Boughèra El Ouafi, this time in text. The Algerian took advantage of his fame and started accepting money for running appearances. He lost his amateur status and suffered a fate similar to that of the famous Finn Paavo Nurmi, for example. A ban from further races. He fell into oblivion.
In 1956 another Algerian won the Olympic marathon in Melbourne. Alain Mimoun. He finally stepped out of Emil Zátopek’s shadow and ran to gold. It didn’t take long for history to be dusted off. Alain sought out El Ouafi, who was living in poverty at the time (he couldn’t work after being hit by a bus), and invited him to a ceremonial reception at the Élysée Palace. Thanks to the president he got a job as a stadium caretaker, and the sports daily L’Équipe launched a collection so he could live his old age with dignity. But there was no happy ending. Three years later Boughèra El Ouafi was shot dead…
