Meursault (France) (AFP)
Longest Marathon: Son of Burgundian winegrowers, Albert Corey was falsely declared American when he won silver at the 1904 Olympic Games in Saint-Louis (Missouri).
117 years later, a municipal councilor from his native village has the injustice repaired.
In the worn photo, with faded blacks and whites, he looks really amateurish in his oversized "Marcel", his crumpled shorts and his lace-up leather shoes.
Yet it was the money that this penniless son of winegrowers won at the 1904 Games marathon. "A beautiful story", marvels Clément Genty, engineer and amateur historian.
"I learned of its existence in a newspaper and I did research", explains the municipal councilor (without label) of Meursault (Côte d'Or), where Albert Corey was born in 1878.
That same year, phylloxera ravaged the vines of this small village, which is not yet a prestigious appellation.
For Étienne Corey, winemaker and father of Albert, it is the exodus in the Parisian suburbs.
For Albert, it will be the army, where he enlisted in 1896. Corey discovers there a predisposition for endurance, notably beating the record of 160 kilometers in 1899. The runner in uniform becomes a showcase for the army, which finances its exploits.
But on January 2, 1903, he was missed.
We find him a year later a strike breaker in the huge slaughterhouses of Chicago.
At the same time, he is trying to break into the world of athletics.
Not easy with his more than approximate English and his "tramp" look, as the Washington Times will say of him.
So he goes to the gall and, when he learns that the Olympics will be held on American soil, he says he ran the "Paris Marathon" in 1900. It's true, but he plays on the confusion with the Olympic marathon of the same year to make believe in this much more prestigious participation.
The ploy works and the Chicago Athletic Association (CAA) sends it to St. Louis.
The press is then moved by the "Success Story" of this "Frenchman", a "slaughterhouse employee", who became the "New Star for Marathon".
Corey is also the only Frenchman at these Games, too far away and therefore too expensive.
- The worst marathon -
On August 30, 1904, he set off under oppressive heat and with the handicap of only one water supply: the organizers had the curious idea of wanting to test the effects of dehydration.
More than half of the thirty or so participants will drop out.
Corey, him, boastful by completing the 40 km (the distance of the test had not yet been fixed at 42.195 km): "I could have done one more lap".
He finished third but the first was disqualified: he had made part of the journey by car ...
The "Frenchman" should therefore have worn the first French silver medal, the "gold-silver-bronze" reward system having been invented during these Olympic Games.
"But he belonged to an American club. He was therefore considered American, according to the rules of the time," Clément Genty told AFP.
The city councilor does not hear it that way, especially since Corey won at the same Olympics a second silver medal, this time in "international team race".
He then moves heaven and earth, to finally succeed: "Mr. Corey is the only participant and medalist of French nationality at this edition of the Games", admits the Olympic Studies Center of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) in a letter from January 25.
The posthumous reward is all the more deserved as Albert Corey's sporting career did not go much further than the 1904 Games: in 1909, he was hit by a car and never regained his previous level.
He returned to France in the summer of 1910 and resumed a military career.
He died in 1926 in Paris, probably of tuberculosis.
"It's a funny story", summarizes his great-grandson Serge Canaud, 69, still in shock to have learned of his ancestor's unknown past, thanks to a phone call from Clément Genty.
"I fell from the clouds," he told AFP from the small Jura village of Moirans-en-Montagne where he is retiring.
"Never in our family, we had talked about that, America and the Games. We didn't know anything about it."
© 2021 AFP