Monday, July 23, 2012

Dorano, Dorano, you made me weep

It's the first of those days in a month and I'm feeling wonderfully weepy. Random things are making me shed tears of inexplicable origin. Among those things is this sidebar story I read while researching about the Olympics on Encarta Encyclopedia:

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Italian marathon runner Dorando Pietri became one of the most famous Olympic athletes in 1908 for the manner in which he lost the marathon event. British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, described Pietri’s final few agonizing yards in this account. American runner John Hayes, who crossed the finish line second, was awarded the gold medal.