France’s Pierre de Coubertin is largely given credit for being the progenitor of the modern Olympic movement. Coubertin was well-read, and in his study of fashionable athletic applications received influence from Thomas Brown’s Schooldays, one of the first widespread public accounts of hare-and-hound running (the forebearer of today’s cross-country running).

While the first Olympics ran in 1896, it wouldn’t be until 1912 that cross-country running would appear as a standalone event, thanks to the efforts of the British representatives of the IOC at a meeting of the Amateur Athletic Association.

Then, for the next three editions, it would be the Nordic nations of Sweden and Finland who dominated the sport at the Olympic level. At the time, it was unheralded. Britain, France, and the United States had already been competing in the sport for decades, and the “unproven” Finnish and Swedish athletes were a complete surprise.

No other edition capped it better than in Paris in 1924, where only 15 runners completed the cross-country event, with Finland taking top honors: Heikki Liimatainen (8th), followed Ville Ritola (2nd) and Paavo Nurmi (1st) for the win. Teams from the USA and France were the only other nations to have enough scorers across the line to count for official purposes.

Conditions were so bad that runners were in a “dying condition” (due to oppressive heat and noxious fumes). 23 athletes never finished. The event has been barred from the Olympic agenda ever since.