Athens Classic Marathon Athens Classic Marathon The Athens Classic (authentic) Marathon is an annual marathon road race held in Athens, Greece, normally in early November. The race attracted 43,000 competitors in 2015 of which 16,000 were for the 42.195 km course, both numbers being an all-time record for the event. The rest of the runners competed in the concurrent 5 and 10 kilometres road races and the racewalking contest. The marathon course is based on the legend from which the race gained its name: Pheidippides, a messenger in Ancient Greece, ran from the Battle of Marathon to Athens to announce the Greeks' victory
Battle of Athens (1946) New York Times opinion piece. In a newspaper column Eleanor Roosevelt had expressed a somewhat popular opinion that GIs might be checked for violent tendencies before they were demobilized. Bill White, leader of Athens' "fighting band" came to see her point. One of the reasons the GI League collapsed was the continuing GI related violence in McMinn county. The Battle of Athens initially received criticism in the press. Coverage quickly faded, and after Alan J. Gould, an executive with the Associated Press, told the Conference of State Directors of the Veterans Administration that the AP would try to suppress the