By David Owen

Things you discover when trying to look up other things...

This narrative begins in the middle of a horse-racing book - the meticulously-researched Making Tracks: the untold story of horse racing in St Louis by Nancy E. Carver.

One passage concerned the 1904 World's Fair Handicap, whose $50,000 purse made it, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune, "by far the richest handicap ever run in this country".

Aha, I thought: I wonder if this is referenced in the Official Report of the 1904 St Louis Olympics, which coincided with the Fair; that would probably make it the first horse race since the fearsome chariot contests of the Ancients to have a place in Olympic history.

It wasn't; but clicking through Spalding's Official Athletic Almanac for 1905 - one of two documents that have come to be accepted as reports for those Games - I came across something else that amazed and appalled me in equal measure.

In one way, I suppose, it was just a reflection of attitudes prevailing at the time; and yet as an illustration of how facile pseudo-science can be used to try to justify prejudice, in this case racial theory, it remains both relevant and utterly chilling.

I think it best if for the most part I allow the text of the almanac's detailed five-and-a-half page account of what it terms "Anthropology days at the stadium", on August 12 and 13 1904, to speak for itself.

The 1904 Olympics took place in conjunction with the St Louis Fair, held at the same time ©Hulton Archive/Getty Images

There were, the Almanac explains, several conferences in the early months of the Exposition "in relation to the athletic ability of the several savage tribes, and owing to the startling rumours and statements that were made in relation to the speed, stamina and strength of each and every particular tribe that was represented at St Louis, it was decided to inaugurate a two-days athletic meet for them, to be known as Anthropology Days".

This would be "the first athletic meeting held anywhere in which savages were exclusive participants".

Day one opened with heats for the 100 yards, featuring "Africans, Moros (Philippines), Patagonians and the Ainu (Japanese), Cocopa (Mexican) and Sioux Indian tribes.

"The fastest time was made by George Mentz of the Sioux tribe, an Americanized Indian."

You get a taste of what is to come from the disparaging commentary on the competitors' levels of performance.

Mentz broke the tape in 11 4/5th secs - a time that "almost any winner of a schoolboy event would eclipse at will".

Lamba, "an African pigmy", was nearly three seconds slower.

"Now the African pigmy," the Almanac pronounces, "leads an outdoor life, hunts, runs, swims, jumps and uses the bow and arrow and spear and, if anything his life might be termed a natural athletic one.

"But nevertheless we find that it takes him 14 3/5ths secs to run 100 yards.

"Any of our American champion sprinters could easily...have given the African pigmy 40 yards and a beating."

Spalding's Official Athletic Almanac for 1905 provided the official report for the previous year's Olympics in St Louis ©IOC

And so it goes on through a gamut of western athletics disciplines.

Shot put - "such a ridiculously poor performance that it astonished all who witnessed it"; 56-lb weight - "ludicrous when one considers Flanagan's great record"; archery - "another disappointment"; long jump - "like other sports the savages took part in, proves conclusively that the savage is not the natural athlete we have been led to believe".

One scarcely knows where to begin in questioning such an obnoxious analysis.

Were these particularly athletic representatives of their respective groups?

It seems highly unlikely, as one of the Ainu was said to be 57-years-old.

Did they understand what was expected of them, let alone have any grounding in the disciplines they were asked to undertake?

The presence of interpreters is mentioned in the penultimate paragraph of the account, and a Mr Martin Delaney of the St Louis University is said to have given demonstrations of the different events.

And yet: "With eight or ten men on the mark, it was a pretty hard thing to explain to them to run when the pistol was fired.

"In running their heats, when coming to the finish tape, instead of breasting it or running through, many would stop and others run under it."

Did they have the slightest motivation to excel?

No: "The pigmies...took nothing whatever seriously, outside of their own shinny game and the tree climbing."

The Ainus "were without doubt the most polite savages the writer has ever met, extremely so...but it is doubtful if they extended themselves to any great effort."

And, given that this seems to have been a fairly random sample of individuals, rather than a gathering of champions, were the performances as poor as portrayed?

Well, Mentz seems to have won the final of what is now described as the 100 metres in 11 3/5ths secs, faster than his run in the heats.

Given that Olympic gold medallist "Milwaukee Meteor" Archie Hahn's winning time was 11 secs, I would classify that as a more than respectable effort.

Archie Hahn, in the inside lane, winning the Olympic 100 metes at St Louis 1904
©Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The winning time in the one mile run, by Black White Bear, was recorded as 5min 38 sec, the sort of performance you might expect a reasonably fit adult with no experience, little motivation and, one imagines, no specialist equipment to manage.

Dr William McGee, chief of the anthropology department, was said to have expressed the view, "perhaps if they could have the use of a professional trainer for a short time that they would become as proficient as many Americans".

This more than reasonable specialist's opinion is, however, brushed aside with a minimum of ceremony.

"The writer doubts it," we are told. "The whole meeting proves conclusively that the savage has been a very much overrated man from an athletic point of view."

On the contrary, any schoolboy - whether capable or not of eclipsing Mentz's sprinting performance - would realise that this fiasco was not only profoundly distasteful, but also useless as a scientific experiment.

Yet the author has no scruple about drawing the most sweeping conclusions.

"Of course," the almanac recounts, "none expected that the Patagonians would be John Flanagans...but they certainly expected a great deal more from the savages who competed in the Anthropology Days than events proved.

"We have heard of the marvellous qualities of the Indian as a runner; of the stamina of the Kaffir, and the natural all-round ability of the savage in athletic feats, but the events at St Louis disprove these tales."

There was, though, another episode from these frankly botched St Louis Games which demonstrated how this primitive attempt at racial pigeon-holing/denigration was not just abhorrent but also nonsensical.

It came on August 30 in the Marathon and is chronicled in the other quasi-official report of the 1904 Games - the so-called "Lucas report" by Charles Lucas.

This is the race known for Thomas Hicks's strychnine-assisted win on a broiling hot day which left 17 of the 31 starters unable to finish, and one - William Garcia - haemorrhaging by the roadside after dust particles caused, what Lucas terms "an erosion of the membraneous wall of the stomach."

The author spent much of the race attending the eventual winner on the dusty roads, and indeed it was he who, seven miles from the finish, administered "one-sixtieth grain of sulphate of strychnine, by the mouth" to the fading runner, "besides the white of one egg".

To give an idea of the gruelling and rudimentary conditions in which the race took place, Lucas says there was just one water station, after 12 miles - "the water being secured from a well".

Moreover: "The visiting athletes were not accustomed to the water, and, as a consequence, many suffered from intestinal disorders."

Among those competing were three South African runners, two of whom, Lentauw and Yamasani (or Yamasini), were described as "from the Kaffir tribe, Zululand" and "employed by a concession at the Fair Grounds".

Both completed the course - Lentauw finishing ninth and Yamasani 12th - which would have been noteworthy in itself, without the additional handicap the two men had to face up to.

As Lucas recounts, they were "chased out of the course by two dogs", with Lentauw "chased almost a mile...thereby losing six or seven minutes".

Hardly surprisingly, both finished "worn out".

One cannot help but wonder why they, and only they, appear to have encountered this problem with the local canine population.

More than half of the field who lined up for the marathon at the 1904 Olympics in St Louis dropped out because of the heat ©Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Jesse Owens they were not - though the great 1930s sprinter did not have to overcome dogs and strychnine-quaffing rivals to demolish the Nazis' racist dogmas.

Nonetheless, for their stamina and pioneering fortitude in what must have seemed utterly alien surroundings, Lentauw and Yamasani surely merit a place on the same pedestal.

Perhaps Durban 2022 can do something to find out more about them and rescue their names - and the rest of their lives - from obscurity.

A 1999 article by Floris J.G. van der Merwe in the Journal of Olympic History suggests that the two men may actually have been named Len Tau and Jan Mashiani, that they may have hailed from Western Transvaal, not Zululand, and that they were probably in St Louis to participate in the Boer War Spectacle that was part of the World's Fair.

The journal reproduces a photograph of them, numbers 35 and 36 in the race, which is in the possession of the Missouri Historical Society.

They stare out from beneath sun-hats with inscrutable expressions - and, in one case, dusty bare feet - across 111 years of history.

It was 56 years later that an athlete called Abebe Bikila would pick up the trail they blazed and follow it all the way to the Arch of Constantine.