Athletics at the 1908 Summer Olympics – Men's marathon Alexandra the next day awarded him a gold or silver-gilt cup in recognition of his achievement. Pietri and Hayes both turned professional and there were several re-matches over the distance of 26 miles 385 yards. Many other marathons adopted that distance, including the important Polytechnic Marathon. The IAAF minutes are reportedly silent as to the reason the 26 miles 385 yards (42.195 km) was chosen in 1921, so any conclusion must be speculative, but regardless of any possible emotional attachment to the distance of the "race of the century", the London 1908 distance had established itself worldwide by that time.
Slow marathon Mihret Kebede created the project as part of a residency with Deveron Arts (now Deveron Projects). The artist had wanted to walk the 5850 miles from Ethiopia to Scotland, but this was not possible because of physical difficulties such as crossing deserts as well as closed borders and visa restrictions. Kebede calculated that if 225 people each walked 26 miles together they would have travelled the distance between Ethiopia and Scotland; in response she developed an accumulative marathon, which involved a 26-mile walk in and around the town of Huntly, and a parallel walk in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The inaugural