2012 Olympic Marathon Course in London's original 2005 bid for the Games and broke with the normal Olympic tradition that the race finishes inside the main Olympic Stadium. The 2012 Summer Olympics was the third to be held in London. The stated distance of the marathon at the London 1908 Summer Olympics – 26 miles and 385 yards, later converted to metric units as 42.195 kilometres – formed the basis of the standard distance adopted by International Association of Athletics Federations in 1921. The route, as confirmed in October 2010, starts on The Mall about 350 metres from the Victoria Memorial and has four
Athletics at the 1908 Summer Olympics – Men's marathon yards on the track") eventually became the origin of the modern Marathon distance of "no less than 42.195 km". According to the book "The Marathon Makers" by John Bryant, the first mile of the 1908 Olympic Marathon course was remeasured by John Disley in the late 1990s and was found to be 174 yards (159 m) short. The official report lists the leaders at each mile from the fourth to the twenty-fourth: Thomas Jack (miles 4–5); Frederick Lord (miles 6–14); Charles Hefferon (miles 15–24). Dorando Pietri of Italy caught Hefferon and sped up between Old Oak Common Lane and Wormwood