I’d walked and walked and walked, walking a little bit more before deciding to do a little walking. Hlavna is a long ol’ walk in itself, but my feet had decided to continue all the way out to the stadium and back, although that is another story for another day. What I will say is that it was a multi-kilometre walk in the burning Kosice sun, a walk that led to the burning of the skin and the resignation of my feet, both of whom decided that Universal Credit would be a better bet than being on the end of these pathetic legs.
It only takes an interesting statue to bring a walk to an end, and I found one such sculpture on Námestie Maratónu mieru, the name of which gives the game away. The statue stood in front of the Eastern Slovak Museum, a fine visit in itself, but I was more interested in sitting down and having a good old look at this naked dude immortalised in statue form on Peace Marathon Square.
The man in question was Pheidippides, and he was wearing approximately zero clothes. Most Greek statues do come nude. Pheidippides is the inspiration behind the modern-day marathon if you weren’t aware. According to legend, our buddy ‘Dippy was present at the Battle of Marathon and subsequently ran all the way from the battlefield to Athens to tell those in charge that the Persians had been defeated. Pheidippides did this, running the 26.2 miles without stopping before bursting into the Assembly, announcing the good news and dying from exhaustion on the same spot. Is the story true? Probably not, Herodotus didn’t mention it after all, but does that matter? The answer is no, no it doesn’t.
But I’m not here to talk about Greeks, not yet at least. The statue and the square are not randomly named, they are named in honour of Europe’s oldest marathon. Known as the International Peace Marathon, Kosice’s annual running race has been the big event on the city’s calendar since its inaugural edition way back in 1924, when Vojtech Braun Bukovský was so inspired by what he saw at the 1924 Olympics in Paris that he decided to bring some of that sporting spirit back to his hometown of Kosice. It only took a few weeks to organise the first marathon, with local chap Karol Holla outlasting the other seven competitors. His time? Three hours, one minute and 35 seconds.
The marathon grew and grew, taking on an international flavour by its second year, and by 1946 it was the biggest marathon on the planet (in terms of runners starting and finishing). It may have lost that honour now, but it remains the main event on the Kosice calendar and a badge of honour for the city — the oldest marathon in Europe, the second-oldest in the world, behind only Boston.
The marathon also holds a curious position in the cinematic history of North Korea, sorry, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. This isn’t as random as it seems, as runners from the DPRK have taken home the gold medal on four occasions. Choe Chang-sop was the first to do so in 1975 before Go Chun-son succeeded in ’77 and ’78. Six years later, Lee Dong-myong became the final North Korean runner to win the race, doing so in extremely bad weather. Hardy folk, those North Koreans.
It is the success of Dong-myong that has been immortalised in the cinematic archives of the DPRK. The film in question was directed by Pak Sung Bok (the cinematic brains behind ‘Girls in My Hometown’ and ‘From Spring to Summer’, two other films you’ll likely never see), a 1985 smash-hit by the name of ‘Run and Run’. The film tells the story of Yong Ho, a lumberjack from a remote Korean village that is very depressed after a particularly embarrassing showing in the Pyongyang Marathon. We’ve all been there, the sort of experience that involves being in a winning position, only to spaff it away through lack of preparation, stamina and probably shoelaces. Not a lack of shoelaces, far from it, if anything there were too many shoelaces involved. You get the point.
The point is that Yong Ho is depressed, and his dad isn’t helping matters. Papa Ho has told young Yong to give up running and concentrate on his burgeoning lumberjack career, there’s no future in aimless running after all. It took the intervention of Yong’s running coach (and the coach’s eyelash-fluttering daughter) to turn it all around, giving Yong Ho the inspiration required to succeed in domestic running.
But can Ho do it on the international stage? This is cinema, so of course he can. Ho is selected to run for the DPRK at the prestigious Peace Marathon in Kosice, in the 60th edition of it no less, and our boy Ho brings the gold medal home to Kim Il-sung, to Juche, to Pyongyang, to his coach and the coach’s daughter, and to his dad, the cynic who finally approves of his son’s actions. So yes, winning cures everything.
I didn’t feel like a winner (or a North Korean) as I stood by the statue. I felt sunburnt, I felt tired, and it felt as though my foot had a very large blister on it. Either that or my blister had an average-sized foot on it, it was difficult to tell. It was time for a drink.
John Bills writes books about Eastern Europe, tomes covering history, travel, booze and the rest. These magical pieces of literary competency can be purchased at this link, so get yourself over there and do the right thing. Pay attention to the discounts.
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