After a millennium and a half hiatus, the Olympic games got inaugural restart, as an international amateur competition, in Athens, Greece. Four years later the games moved to Paris, where in true French fashion they featured “Olympic arts” events, and then made their way to St. Louis. The city wasn’t the committee’s first choice, but Chicago was holding the World’s Fair, at the same time, so President Theodore Roosevelt urged the move to St. Louis instead.

On this day, May 14, the combined Olympic games & Louisiana Purchase centennial exposition opened with ceremonies and the Missouri State High School Track and Field Championships. Although the actual games got underway in late August, this day marked the start of the “Physical Culture” section of the exposition and therefore of the Olympic games.

If the timing was not confusing enough, the actual staging of the events was even more absurdly amateurish. Marathon runners ran over a dusty trail marked off by flags and cleared just ahead of the of the pack by cars and horsemen, which resulted in an ever-present cloud of dust choking the runners. The first winner was disqualified when it was learned he hitched a ride for seven miles of the track; the second winner almost died from exhaustion. The acrobatic competition, meanwhile, was won by man with one leg. One real leg, at least, and a wooden one in place of the amputated second.