Episode 2
The Slowest Marathon Ever: The Japanese Runner Who Disappeared for 54 Years
How can a marathon take 54 years to finish?
In 1912, Japanese runner Shizo Kanakuri arrived in Stockholm as one of Japan's first Olympic athletes. He had already been celebrated as a national running hero after an extraordinary performance in the Olympic trials.
But the Stockholm Olympic marathon would become one of the strangest stories in running history.
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After a brutal journey from Japan, extreme heat, dehydration and an exhausting Olympic marathon, Kanakuri stopped before the finish and quietly returned home. Swedish officials eventually considered him a missing person.
More than five decades later, a Swedish journalist discovered that Kanakuri was still alive. In 1967, at the age of 75, he returned to Stockholm and finally crossed the finish line.
His official elapsed time? 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds.
But the real story isn't the record. Kanakuri went on to become one of the most important figures in the development of Japanese distance running, helping establish the culture and infrastructure that would make Japan a global running nation.
This is the story of Shizo Kanakuri, the runner who took half a century to finish a marathon, and helped build a running culture that lasted much longer.
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