The Marathon Runner and the Irish Priest

Athens, birthplace of the Games, August 29, 2004, 6 p.m., the last day of the XXVIII Olympiad. One hundred and two men set off from the city of Marathon for a 42.195-kilometer race. They set off from the place from which, in 490 BC, the messenger Phidippides is said to have left to announce to the Athenian citizens the victory of the Greeks over the Persians during the First Persian War. Several hundred million television viewers are in front of their sets so as not to miss the event and the victory promised to Kenyan Paul Tergat who, a year earlier, had set the record in the discipline.

Until the halfway point, everything was going according to the predictions. Suddenly, the astonished commentators saw bib number 1,234 take the lead of the race and hold on, stride after stride. So who is this outsider who is defying the predictions? It is Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima, a 35-year-old Brazilian with a rather modest record: 75th at the Olympic Games in Sydney (Australia) in 2000. This son of farm workers, the youngest of seven children, employed from the age of 8, started running on his way home from work in the fields. “As a child, I had nothing,” he says. As a teenager, his school organized a sports competition. They lent him shoes, he won and everything happened in quick succession.

At the 35th kilometer, he had a thirty-second lead over the competitors chasing him and seemed on the verge of achieving the feat. All the cameras in the world were trained on his emaciated face, when the unthinkable happened. Out of nowhere, a madman in a red kilt, beret and high green socks tackled Lima to the ground. The athlete’s grimace of fear betrayed his immediate thought: his Olympic dream was shattered. Quickly helped by a Greek spectator, Vanderlei de Lima resumed his run, dazed, limping slightly. In the meantime, two of his pursuers had overtaken him. Thanks to the crowd’s cheers, he managed to finish third and won the bronze medal like a hero!

A magnificent loser

The madman who attacked him was identified. He was a former Irish priest named Cornelius “Neil” Horan. Released from his priestly obligations in 2002 because of his antics, he had already distinguished himself on July 30, 2003 when he burst onto the track of the British Formula 1 Grand Prix in the middle of racing cars going at 320 km/h. The goal of his exhibitions: “To announce the second arrival of Christ.” Sentenced to a twelve-month suspended prison sentence, a 3,000 euro fine and expelled from Greece, he wrote to Lima several times to apologize. Alas, the latter never responded. This mishap, however, made the Brazilian athlete one of the most magnificent losers in History. On December 7, 2004, the International Olympic Committee awarded him the Pierre de Coubertin Medal for his fair play and sportsmanship. And when his country hosted the Games in 2016, he had the great privilege of lighting the Olympic cauldron in Rio. An honor commented on in bad faith by the eccentric former priest: “If I hadn’t stopped him in Athens, he wouldn’t have been so famous…”