Tuesday, August 28, 2012

From USA today, nothing new, but maybe a little more.


Sherlock Holmes gets modern treatment in two TV shows


Sherlock Holmes may not be the first name that comes to mind when you think "superhero." But based on his recent TV and big-screen track record, the world's most famous literary detective, at the very least, is a globe-trotting time traveler.
  • Detecting a trend: Jonny Lee Miller is Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu plays Dr. Joan Watson in CBS' 'Elementary,' which premieres Sept. 27.
    BCraig Blankenhorn, CBS
    Detecting a trend: Jonny Lee Miller is Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu plays Dr. Joan Watson in CBS' 'Elementary,' which premieres Sept. 27.
BCraig Blankenhorn, CBS
Detecting a trend: Jonny Lee Miller is Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu plays Dr. Joan Watson in CBS' 'Elementary,' which premieres Sept. 27.
Even as he was fighting his nemeses in two recent films set in the 19th century, he also was solving crimes in BBC's acclaimed Sherlock, a television series set in modern-day London.
And when CBS rolls out its prime-time Sherlock iteration this fall, Elementary, Holmes will be living in 21st-century Manhattan unraveling mysteries on a new continent, even as BBC's Sherlock, a co-production with PBS'Masterpiece (where it airs in the USA), prepares to film its third season back in the U.K.
  • The world's love affair with Holmes in all his mutations — be it in films, on TV or re-imagined in new novels — is cyclical. And "we seem to be at the peak of another wave," says Leslie Klinger, a Holmesian scholar and member of the Baker Street Irregulars, an organization of Holmes devotees.

"Every age takes something different from Sherlock Holmes," says Klinger, who worked as a consultant on the 2009 and 2011 films that starred Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as Holmes and Dr. John Watson (a third installment is in development). Klinger cites Guinness World Records, which lists Holmes as the most portrayed movie character; 75 actors have played the part in more than 200 films.
"There is something that every actor brings to this role," says Benedict Cumberbatch, who is up for an Emmy for lead actor in a miniseries for his work on Sherlock, in a phone interview from London. "Like Hamlet, if you're any good, you bring enough of your own personality and talent to bear that you will make it your own."
"There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before," Holmes says in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1887 A Study in Scarlet, but the notion hasn't stopped filmmakers from experimenting with new interpretations of the Holmes legacy.
Sherlock, which premiered in 2010, has had fans swooning over Cumberbatch andMartin Freeman as Holmes and Watson.
And whether CBS' Elementary, which premieres Sept. 27 (10 ET/PT) and stars Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes and Lucy Liu as Joan Watson, is a misstep or a stroke of genius is a case waiting to be cracked.
"Every vision of Holmes is a legitimate one," Klinger says. And great actors, including Downey, Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett, who starred in the acclaimed Granada television series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984-1994) in England, have found the role irresistible and inspiring.
Men for all seasons
Placing Holmes and Watson in the 21st century is not the first time the detectives have been shifted to an era other than the Victorian period in which they were first written. Universal Studios' 12 movies starring Rathbone all took place in the 1940s, the decade in which they were made. He's seen driving a car and even goes head-to-head against the Nazis.
From these films grew the iconic image of Holmes (in part because of Rathbone's Shakespearean training) as a suave English gentleman decked out in a Deerstalker cap and Inverness cape. The films also are why Watson (as portrayed by Nigel Bruce) is considered by many to be a bumbling fool. But Conan Doyle envisioned him as a competent surgeon and excellent marksman, and quite intelligent.
As for the original Holmes, created in the 19th century and featured in four novels and more than 50 short stories, he was famous for his logic, disguises, a tobacco fetish and the occasional use of cocaine and opiates.
Current novels range from The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, a period piece that was authorized by the Conan Doyle estate, to Laurie R. King's Mary Russell novels, which give Holmes a wife who also solves mysteries.
In film, Downey buffed Holmes into more of an action-adventure hero who brings mixed-martial-arts chops to his bare-chested street fights. On television, Cumberbatch'sSherlock is a nicotine-patch-wearing, tech savvy, fast-talking, antisocial genius whose brain analyzes clues at lightning speed. Elementary's Sherlock is a man with self-doubts, a secret past and a Watson described as his "sober companion."
Cumberbatch's drama may be set in modern times, but, he says, "we came from a place of absolute reverence for the original. So it was always going to be an interpretation of the original, however much Sherlock fiddles with an iPhone or fusses around with modern graphics.
"Obviously there are some witty adaptations of certain ideas, but an awful lot of the material we use is from the canon. And the references are rich throughout," he says. "I guess that's why we're scoring high. We're appealing on both of those levels, and the traditionalists love the updates."
Masterpiece executive producer Rebecca Eaton says she isn't sure there's room for two modern-day Sherlocks on TV. "It's already a crowded field. … I think (CBS is) skating a little close to the risky edge, because there's already such a successful TV show out there."
She acknowledges, however, that "there are a lot of Sherlock Holmes fans out there. I don't know how those people will react to another Sherlock. Either they could be quite dismissive, or they could welcome any bit of Sherlock in the drought between our last season and the next one."
Elementary executive producer Robert Doherty says: "Sherlock has broad shoulders, and I believe he can carry us all. I've seen Sherlock in other novels, in comic books, in television shows, in movies, in TV movies. Some are better than others, but nobody has managed to ruin the franchise. It's a credit to what Conan Doyle did in the very beginning."
Overall, Doherty says, it's a good time to be in the Sherlock business, "but you also want to make sure that you're telling your own story, and that you can sit down and be excited about your vision for the show and not think about the others."
Room for everyone
Don't expect a Cumberbatch vs. Miller smackdown over the franchise. The actors are friends who co-starred in Danny Boyle's theatrical production of Frankenstein. And Miller called Cumberbatch before accepting Elementary. "Benedict has been very supportive, and I wanted to reassure him about how different this script was and project was," Miller told reporters in July. "All of the other differences will kind of be apparent."
"I genuinely, as a friend, wish him all the luck in the world," Cumberbatch says. "It's a wonderful role, and I hope it's as enjoyable for him as it has been for me. I think there's room for both of us, (but if) his takes over, then I've had a fantastic time doing it and I wouldn't bear any grudge. I adore Jonny."
"It is a great honor to be asked to play such a rich character," Miller says via e-mail, "and I felt there were many differences in Rob Doherty's great script to anything I had seen previously. I particularly like the darker struggles our version of Sherlock is dealing with."
As to how he'll make Holmes his own, Miller says: "I used the books. There is so much material there that you can try to find aspects that maybe haven't been seen so much. You can also discard what you feel has been seen a lot. I am trying to show some conflict and difficulty in Sherlock's life, so he seems a little at odds with the world."
For now, while Sherlock balances its story lines atop Conan Doyle's body of work including The Hound of the BaskervillesElementary will devise new Holmes stories.
"We're really trying to embrace our setting, trying to embrace our Watson," Doherty says. "That's not to say we won't ever take something from the canon and try to make it an episode, but it's not what's really driving us."
In the end, it will be up to fans to decide whether there's room for two modern-day Holmes/Watson teams on TV.
Kristina Manente, who last year founded the London-based fan group Baker Street Babes (bakerstreetbabes.com), says Sherlock "is so brilliant, but when I first heard about it, I didn't like the idea of modernizing it. But it makes so much sense: Holmes was always a modern man. The acting and writing is flawless."
And she's "quite open-minded about Elementary. I love Jonny Lee Miller. I'm definitely going to check it out.
"To be fair, BBC's Sherlock has brilliantly used the canon as its base, so (Elementary) can't really mimic that. They have to do something new for it not to be thought of as a copycat."

Book Review - Thinking Outside the Tin-dispatch Box.


By William R Cochran
2011

I have known 'Bill' Cochran for about 20 years. He is also a  Sherlockian of some repute.
 Member of the BSI since 1988 and a former editor of The Baker Street Journal.

I have listened to many excellent papers by Bill over the years, and held him in such regard as a Sherlockian that I asked him to be the Master of Ceremonies for our first St Charles Sherlock Holmes convention The Games Afloat!

He is co-founder of the Occupants of the Empty House and has edited their newsletter for years. The Occupants are one of the most well regarded Sherlockian societies in the country.

So with this kind of background in the Sherlockian world, one would expect nothing less than a thoroughly researched and thought out book.

And that is exactly what you get. One could say that Bill has been writing this book for about thirty years.
All his papers and presentations have been aiming towards this book for years, whether he realized it or not.
Keeping some of the ideas he presented over that time, and discarding others.

The book manly argues the different man Holmes seems to have become after the 'Great Hiatus'.
Bill notes and explores the personality changes in the master after almost four years away from Baker St.
And you can tell by reading it, that many years of thought and research and personal insights have gone into this book. This is a book that took many years to develop, and in Bills mind, probably is not done yet.

You probably are not going to sit down with this at bed time and read it with a glass of wine by the fireplace.
More than likely you will sit by your computer, ready to research some of his insights,  with a glass of good whiskey and ponder the research and ideas presented in this book. You will not agree with everything in it; you will definitely learn a lot, and you will come away looking at the canon, especially the later writings, in a different light.

And you will definitely come away respecting Bills knowledge as a Sherlockain.
The book can be found at. . .

There are two options for the book.  Option number 1 is to have them contact me (Bill) at murraytheorderly@yahoo.com I have ten books on hand. If they would like aa autographed copy I will send them along right away. $20.00 plus postage($5). Hope this helps.  I have ten books on hand. 
Option Number 2 is they can order them from George at http://www.batteredbox.com/SherlockianScholarshipConventional/ThinkingOutsideTinDispatchBox.htm.  Perhaps this copy would be more valuable as it is unsigned


Thursday, August 23, 2012

And this you probably already knew. . . .


New Sherlock Holmes And Female Watson Introduce 'Elementary' On CBS


Elementary - Jonny Lee Miller & Lucy Liu
Sherlock Holmes has returned to popularity, thanks to two blockbuster movies starring Robert Downey Jr. and an acclaimed British series starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Now Sherlock Holmes comes to present day New York in CBS’s new fall show ElementaryJonny Lee Miller plays Sherlock Holmes. He actually performed Frankenstein on stage with Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Holmes in the series Sherlock
“Even before this project came along, I loved the work that Benedict has done on the show so I’d call him up like a groupie after every episode came out, want to talk to him about it,” Miller said to the Television Critics Association at a CBS session today. “We had discussions about this project as well. It’s a private discussion. Benedict’s been very, very supportive and I wanted to reassure him about how different this script was, the project was and all the other differences that would be apparent. It’s another country and a whole other vibe. Obviously we discussed it.”
Sherlock Holmes was author Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective character in many Victorian era novels. His partner was Dr. Watson, often a reflection and sounding board for Holmes’ thought process. CastingLucy Liu as Watson marks a major update to the character, making her a sober partner for a Holmes released from rehab.
He could’ve made Watson a man,” Liu said. “The only reason he didn’t is because in the story themselves, you’ll see Sherlock Holmes has a bit of an awkward relationship with the other gender. Bringing that into play is a constant reminder of that awkwardness and division, being a friend but it’s a woman. That’s a nice thing to always have under there because it’s like having an itchy sweater. You have it on but something’s going on. It’s a nice thing to have that uncomfortability.”
Making Watson a woman could make some audiences think romance. Instead Elementary hopes to reintroduce platonic friendships into mystery entertainment.
“The friendship is core,” Miller said. “The partnership and they become colleagues, partners. There’s also the other reason that they have to be together that we have, the sober companionship. [Executive producer] Robert [Doherty] said, ‘Man and a woman shouldn’t matter.’ There is that element and people are going to wonder, but then wondering and asking questions is something you really want your audience to do.”
In some of the adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, Watson became the comic relief. Liu won’t be that kind of Watson. “If you’ve ever been able to read the actual literature, Watson is actually not really comedic,” she said. “He’s somebody who’s incredibly observant. All his stories come out of what he sees and experiences. It’s a very fresh and wonderful take on who Watson is. Who Watson is right now is sort of on the sideline observing. She’s his sober companion so she’s not engaged in the mystery. She’s engaged in him and you see how that blossoms out. The foot in the bucket and that kind of Watson happens because in entertainment, there’s got to be a sidekick. In this case I don’t think that’s the direction we’re going in but ask me in six episodes. If I have a foot in a bucket then we’ll have a discussion.”
Elementary premieres Thursday, Sept. 27 on CBS

Also from the BBC


A Point of View: The enduring appeal of Sherlock Holmes

Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes
The fictional detective retains his grip on our imaginations, even in an age when we have lost faith in the power of reason to solve problems, says philosopher John Gray.
When the future seems more than usually uncertain and there's something troubling in the present, it's natural to look to the past. Could that be why the figure of Sherlock Holmes is once again in our minds?
Brilliantly re-imagined in the new BBC series, Holmes uses the power of his luminous intellect to solve seemingly insoluble riddles. He is described as relying on reason, employing a science of deduction that enables him to explain events that have so far proved baffling.
Yet it's not the methods used by the fictional detective that fascinate us. It's the contradictory figure of Holmes himself.
Nearly 100 years on from the setting of the last of the Sherlock Holmes stories, in August 1914, we've witnessed a succession of failed experiments in using reason.

It's not just the collapse of communism followed by upheaval in free market capitalism - both of them systems based on theories that were supposed to be rigorously rational.
In everyday life, systems that were designed to be infallible - from the security software we install on our home computers to the mathematical formulae used by hedge funds to trade vast sums of money - have proved to be dangerously unreliable.
From the health service to care homes and prisons, institutions and services have been remodelled to obey principles of rational efficiency, with the result often turning out to be lacking in human sensitivity and at worst a mere shambles.
As a result of these failures, faith in reason has been dented. The idea that the intellect alone can be our guide in life is weaker than it has been for many years.
At the same time, Sherlock Holmes - a symbol of the power of intellect if ever there was one - is as powerful a presence in our imagination as he's ever been. It's a contradiction worth exploring.
It's not the science of deduction that gives Holmes his power over us, since he doesn't in fact use it. In The Sign of Four, Holmes declares: "I never guess. It is a shocking habit - destructive to the logical faculty." Yet the type of reasoning which Holmes uses in most of Conan Doyle's stories includes a good deal of guesswork.
We tend to think there are two types of reasoning:
  • deduction, where we move with logical certainty from general principles to a particular conclusion, as in "all swans are white, this is a swan, so this must be white"
  • and induction, where we move from particular observations to general principles, as in "all the swans that have ever been seen are white, so all swans are white"
Deduction is infallible as long as the premises are true, while induction yields probabilities that can always be falsified by events - the black swans that turn up when no one is expecting them.
Pair of black swans and two cygnets
The type of reasoning Holmes uses is of another, more conjectural kind - sometimes called abductive reasoning - that can't offer certainty or any precise assessment of probability, only the best available account of events. Importantly, this kind of reasoning can't be practised simply by following rules.

"When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Here Holmes is describing what he calls reasoning backwards - moving from the facts to an explanation of what has produced them by a process of elimination.
He does this in many of his cases, but it's not applying this rule that accounts for his astonishing feats.
If Holmes can identify an unlikely pattern in events, it's by using what Watson describes as his "extraordinary genius for minutiae". As Holmes tells Inspector Lestrade, the plodding Scotland Yard officer: "You know my method. It is founded on the observation of trifles."
Holmes notices things other people don't, and then - using a mental agility that involves creative imagination rather than the mechanical application of any method of reasoning - comes up with hypotheses he tests one by one.
It's not cold logic but a clairvoyant eye for detail that enables him to solve his cases. "I can never bring you to realise the importance of sleeves," he tells Watson, "the suggestiveness of thumb nails, or the great issues that may hang from a bootlace."
Holmes has the knack of knowing where to look, asking the right questions and crafting theories to account for what he has found.
What's striking is that Holmes relies on guesswork and imagination, supplemented and corrected by observation, as much as much on reasoning. A physician himself before he became a writer, Doyle tells us that he based the character of the detective on a medical professor he had known.

Like a good doctor, Holmes bases his inferences on evidence, but he reaches his conclusions by using his judgement. And he doesn't rely on his judgement only in the work of detection. He's ready to disregard legal rules when they seem to him unfair or out of place in the circumstances at hand.
As he puts it to Watson, "Once or twice in my career I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience."
With some of the qualities of a late 19th Century decadent, Holmes turns to detection as he does to his cocaine habit - to stave off boredom.
Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes
But he's not just playing at being a detective. He wants justice to prevail, and where necessary he's willing to flout the law in order to ensure that it does. The servant of reason, Holmes is also a romantic hero ready to defy authority in order to stand by his sense of morality.
At this point we're getting close to the contradictory sources of Holmes' power over the imagination. On the one hand he seems devoid of human feeling - "a high-functioning sociopath," as he describes himself in the new series.
At times he treats Watson - a stand-in for human beings in general - with something not far from contempt. But he also has genuine affection for his friend, and a deep sense of the random cruelty of the human scene.
In The Adventure of the Cardboard Box, published in 1892, he asks, "What is the object of this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must have a purpose, or else our universe has no meaning and that is unthinkable. But what purpose? That is humanity's great problem, to which reason, so far, has no answer."
Here Holmes is voicing an anxiety felt by many at the end of the 19th Century. With the advance of science, religion seemed to have been discredited. But the human needs to which religion answered - above all, the need for meaning in life - hadn't gone away. If anything, the need for meaning was felt more acutely than before.

Along with others at the time, Doyle found consolation in spiritualism - a movement with many of the functions of religion, but which claimed to be based on scientific evidence. That particular rationalist creed was followed by others, more militant and political in nature. All of them claimed to have solved "humanity's great problem" and to have done so by the use of reason.
Aside from a few relics of Victorian rationalism who find a curious comfort in Darwinism, most of us now accept that reason can't give meaning or purpose to life. If we're not content with the process of living itself, we need myths and myths very often contain contradictions.
Holmes is one such myth. Seeming to find order in the chaos of events by using purely rational methods, he actually demonstrates the enduring power of magic.
An exemplar of logic who lives by guesswork, a man who stands apart from other human beings but who is moved by a sense of human decency, Holmes embodies the modern romance of reason - a myth we no longer believe in, but find it hard to live without.
Can we learn to be reasonable without expecting too much of reason? Or will we blunder on, trying to remodel the world on rational principles that in practice produce chaos?


The Adventure of the Cardboard Box

Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson
  • First published in 1892
  • A woman receives a box in the post containing two severed ears
  • Police initially think it is a prank
  • Holmes and Watson suspect it to be a clue to a more serious and perhaps deadly game


From the BBC


Sherlock Holmes statue reinstated in Edinburgh after tram works

Sherlock Holmes statue in Picardy PlaceThe Sherlock Holmes statue has been reinstated in Picardy Place


A statue of Sherlock Holmes has been reinstated three years after it was removed to make way for tram works.
The bronze statue was put into storage because its site in Picardy Place, at the top of Edinburgh's Leith Walk, was directly in the path of the project.
Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes, was born in Picardy Place in 1859.
The statue was erected by the Federation of Master Builders to mark its 50th anniversary.
Lesley Hinds, Edinburgh City Council's transport convener, said: "Commissioned to mark the birthplace of his creator Arthur Conan Doyle, the magnificent statue of Sherlock Holmes has been a much loved figure on Picardy Place since 1991.
"The statue has been carefully conserved and spruced up by experts at Powderhall Bronze and we're delighted to see it back on public display once again."

Monday, August 20, 2012

Another reason to like Rathbone. . . .

Who can argue against a Holmes that likes beer?
And what this has to do with Holmes I haven't a clue.

Friday, August 17, 2012

A fun clip from a year or so ago. . .

BBC

Can't wait to see this. . . .



Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's lost diary reveals the origins of Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's lost diary reveals the origins of Sherlock Holmes

Fascinating case of Holmes and the Arctic adventure: Conan Doyle's lost diary reveals origins of super-sleuth



Read more: Credit where credit is due. . .



Think of Sherlock Holmes and most people conjure up images of foggy London streets or smoke-filled drawing rooms rather than the frozen desolation of the Arctic.
Yet a diary to be published for  the first time next month suggests the seeds of the sleuth’s character may have been born while a young Arthur Conan Doyle was involved in an adventure on the icy seas.
The author, then a 20-year-old medical student, was hired in early 1880 as a ship’s surgeon on the Greenland whaler the Hope Of Peterhead and kept daily records  of life at sea.
Called Dangerous Work: Diary Of An Arctic Adventure, the resulting manuscripts are his earliest known work and have been hidden from the public for more than a century. The facsimiles, photographs and annotated transcripts reveal how closely some of the foibles and  passions of his fictional characters mirror his own.
For example, Conan Doyle’s exquisitely drawn image of himself as a warmly clothed pipe-smoker with  a loyal canine companion could have been an early depiction of Holmes.
It is easy to imagine this upright figure, with a piercing stare and intense power of concentration, transposed to English moorland dressed in deerstalker and caped overcoat.
The figures of whalers intent on shooting their prey may have fuelled the budding author’s depictions of bloodthirsty and wicked criminals.
His imagination also appears to have been inspired by the sea’s  lingering fog and mist, which would later provide the backdrop for his crime scenes. In an entry dated Thursday, July 29, 1880, he notes: ‘Horrible contemptible pusillanimous thickness over all.’
The diary records Conan Doyle’s fondness for tobacco, again a  familiar trait in Holmes, who smokes all manner of pipes, cigarettes  and cigars.
At one point he says: ‘Traveled (his mis-spelling) a considerable distance, and would have gone to the Pole, but my matches ran short and I couldn’t get a smoke.’ 
Lost and found: One of the annotated drawings in the Arctic diary
Lost and found: One of the annotated drawings in the Arctic diary
His final entry for the day is ‘gin and tobacco at night’. Then, on Friday, July 30, the author records: ‘Took no dinner but went to the masthead in preference, enjoying a pipe and the welcome sunshine.’ The diary is thought to have been in the archives of the British Library.
Jon Lellenberg, who has co-edited the volume with biographer Daniel Stashower, said: ‘We see the young medical student step outside  the classroom into settings of  high adventure and great peril,  finding his way among hard men whose skill and daring he came to respect greatly.’
lDangerous Work: Diary Of An Arctic Adventure is published by the British Library on September 26 at £25 or can be ordered on Amazon.co.uk. Copyright 2012 Conan Doyle Estate Ltd


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2183847/Sherlock-Holmes-Conan-Doyles-lost-diary-reveals-origins-super-sleuth.html#ixzz23oLUxmOE

Monday, August 13, 2012

Another take on it, with pictures. . . !


Sherlock Holmes and the mystery of the marathon

The power of the sporting press when London first staged the Olympics has caused pain and blisters for runners ever since, writes STEVEN DOWNES
There’s sure to be some women in Sunday’s Olympic marathon, or runners in the men’s race later this week, who weary after the 25-mile marker or tire beyond 40-kilometres, and give a silent curse to the organisers for the apparently arbitrary extra distance that takes the race to 26 miles. And then those inexplicable 385 yards.
One of the most famous images from Olympic history, Pietri crossing the line, just, at the end of the 1908 marathon in the White City Stadium. Arthur Conan Doyle was there, but he is not in this picture
As they try to keep their form together over the final stages towards to finish in The Mall, they may not realise that this mystery of the marathon owes something to the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author who devised the world’s best-known fictional detective, was a star reporter on the first London Olympic Games in 1908.
“I do not often do journalistic work,” said Sir Arthur in his memoirs, “but on the occasion of the Olympic Games of 1908, I was tempted, chiefly by the offer of an excellent seat.” Not necessarily the thoughts of sports journalists since, but one which those seated in the London Olympic Stadium this week may appreciate.
Conan Doyle’s reports from the first London Olympics did much to create the marathon myth and enshrine the long-accepted race distance.
The first Olympic marathon in 1896 – a long-distance test of endurance – was staged on the ancient road from the scene of the battle of Marathon to Athens, less than 25 miles. There was no definition of the race distance at the 1900 and 1904 Games.
But in 1908, royal requests were taken into account by Olympic organisers. The race started at Windsor Castle, beneath the royal nursery bedroom, and it demanded a lap of the track in the White City Stadium in west London to finish in front of the Royal Box. It all added up to 26 miles and 385 yards.
The extra distance altered the result of that Olympic marathon, and changed the course of sporting history.
That race 104 years ago remains one of the defining moments of the modern Olympics.
The heat of the summer’s day and the length of the course saw 28 of the 55 runners give up long before they got anywhere near to the finish.
Dorando Pietri, the long-time leader, was exhausted by his efforts, and as the Italian entered the stadium in front of a record 90,000 crowd, he stumbled and fell on the cinder track before being helped across the finishing line by concerned officials.
Following an objection from the American team, Pietri became one of the Olympics’ earliest and most notorious disqualifications. Unwittingly, Pietri had received “outside assistance”, a rule that can still be applied under the International Association of Athletics Federation’s modern rule book.
Pietri forfeited the gold medal, which was presented instead to the runner-up, Johnny Hayes, of the United States.
But the gallant Pietri became the hero of the piece, in major part due to the reports written by Conan Doyle, who was working for the Daily Mail at the behest of the newspaper’s owner, Lord Northcliffe, who had donated £12,000 – more than £1 million at today’s values – towards the costs of staging the Olympics.
The Daily Mail of July 25, 1908, carried his report:
“The great Olympic cheer for which everybody had been waiting was throttled at its birth. Through the doorway crawled a little, exhausted man… He seemed bewildered by the immensity of the crowd.”
Conan Doyle at work: a sports journalist at the 1908 London Olympics
Conan Doyle noted that Pietri turned the wrong way, was re-directed, but looked out on his feet. “He trotted for a few exhausted yards like a man galvanised into life; then the trot expired into a slow crawl, so slow that the officials could scarcely walk slow enough to keep beside him.
“Good Heavens, he has fainted; is it possible that even at this last moment the prize may slip through his fingers? Every eye slides round to that dark archway. No second man has yet appeared. Then a sigh of relief goes up. I do not think in all that great assembly any man would have wished victory to be torn at the last instant from this plucky little Italian…
“He was within a few yards of my seat. Amid stooping figures and grasping hands I caught a glimpse of the haggard, yellow face, the glazed, expressionless eyes, the lank black hair streaked across the brow.
”It is horrible, and yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.”
Conan Doyle reported that any disqualification of the 22-year-old pastry chef from Carpi would be a “tragedy”. “The Italian’s great performance can never be effaced from our records of sport,” Sherlock Holmes’s creator noted, “be the decision of the judges what it may.”
Conan Doyle’s report was accompanied by his own letter of appeal for donations for the runner, and raised nearly £309 – or £35,000 by today’s values – for Pietri, who duly passed on the money to a national appeal for victims of the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius which had prevented Rome staging the Olympics that year.
Pietri did, though, accept a silver cup, presented to him the following day by Queen Alexandra.
The public clamour for such sporting melodrama saw the first global marathon boom, with Pietri and Hayes running races as a professionals for the next four years.
In Britain, Polytechnic Harriers staged a race on that 26-mile, 385-yard route from Windsor to London which continued until London’s traffic forced it off the roads, finally, in the 1980s. The trophy used for that race was had been presented by theSporting Life newspaper in 1908 to Hayes, and which is used now by the modern London Marathon when not on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Somewhat like his creation, Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle had an ability to succeed at many things that he turned his hand, especially in sport. He played cricket for the Marylebone Cricket Club – he once took the wicket of WG Grace; he had a golf handicap of 10; he got to the third round of the 1913 British amateur billiards championship; and he was among the founders of Portsmouth football club.
His interest in skiing was influential in Edwardian society, and he was such an expert on boxing that in 1909, he was invited to referee the world heavyweight title bout between Jim Jeffries and Jack Johnson.
But Conan Doyle’s greatest sporting legacy is probably popularising the distance of the marathon to what causes so much misery to so many runners today.
The IAAF was founded in 1912, and from the 1924 Paris Olympics, the distance of the marathon race was fixed at those 42.2km first run in 1908.
Peter Matthews, the former editor of the Guinness Book of Records and one of the specialist athletics commentators working at the third London Olympic Games, acknowledges that the marathon race may have been as much a Conan Doyle creation as was Sherlock Holmes.
“Clearly the Dorando story captured public imagination,” Matthews said.
“When looking for a distance, why not follow the London example, with Britain the arbiter and setter of so many rules of sports?”


CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE. . .

I did not know this!!!!


Olympics-Marathon runners 

may curse Sherlock Holmes 

creator



By Steven Downes

LONDON, Aug 2 (Reuters) - As exhausted runners enter the
final stages of men's and women's marathons at the London
Olympics they may silently curse Arthur Conan Doyle,
 the creator of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, and a pastry chef who
was disqualified from the race in 1908.

While Greek soldier Phidippides only had to run 25 miles
from Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C., they will have to keep
going for 26 miles and 385 yards, a distance first covered in
the 1908 London Olympics.

For much of the 1908 race, pastry chef Dorando Pietri led as
more than half his rivals gave up long before the finish line.
As the Italian entered the stadium, however, he stumbled and
fell to the cinder track before being helped across the
finishing line by concerned officials.

Pietri was disqualified. Unwittingly, he had received
"outside assistance", a rule which can still be applied under
the International Association of Athletics Federation's modern
rule book.

The Italian forfeited the gold medal, which was presented
instead to the runner-up, Johnny Hayes of the United States.
Pietri did, though, accept a silver cup presented to him the
following day by Queen Alexandra.

Conan Doyle, working as a journalist, turned the gallant
Pietri into a hero through his writing about the race for
London's Daily Mail.

The public clamour for such sporting melodrama saw the first
global marathon boom, with Pietri and Hayes running races as a
professionals for the next four years.

Peter Matthews, the former editor of the Guinness Book of
Records and one of the specialist athletics commentators working
at the third London Olympic Games, acknowledges that the
marathon race may have been as much a Conan Doyle creation as
was Sherlock Holmes.

"Clearly the Dorando story captured public imagination,"
Matthews told Reuters, referring to the tale which is known by
the Italian's first name.

The marathon was part of the programme at the first modern
Games in 1896 and was staged on the ancient road from the scene
of the battle of Marathon to Athens, around 25 miles.


ROYAL REQUESTS

But in 1908, royal requests were taken into account. The
race started at Windsor Castle, beneath the royal nursery
bedroom, and it demanded a lap of the track in the White City
Stadium in west London to finish beneath the Royal Box. It all
added up to 26 miles and 385 yards.

The distance of the race varied slightly during the next few
Olympics. It was permanently fixed from the 1924 Paris Olympics
when they opted for the distance of London's storied race.

The following are excerpts from Conan Doyle's report in the
Daily Mail on July 25, 1908.

"The great Olympic cheer for which everybody had been
waiting was throttled at its birth. Through the doorway crawled
a little, exhausted man... He seemed bewildered by the immensity
of the crowd.

"He trotted for a few exhausted yards like a man galvanised
into life; then the trot expired into a slow crawl, so slow that
the officials could scarcely walk slow enough to keep beside
him.

"Good Heavens, he has fainted; is it possible that even at
this last moment the prize may slip through his fingers? Every
eye slides round to that dark archway. No second man has yet
appeared. Then a sigh of relief goes up. I do not think in all
that great assembly any man would have wished victory to be torn
at the last instant from this plucky little Italian...

"He was within a few yards of my seat. Amid stooping figures
and grasping hands I caught a glimpse of the haggard, yellow
face, the glazed, expressionless eyes, the lank black hair
streaked across the brow.

"It is horrible, and yet fascinating, this struggle between
a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame." 

(Editing by Nigel Hunt)

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE.