For Dorando, the Marathon and Teresa were his two great passions and now, almost every night, he would take himself off to train just outside of Carpi. Sometimes friends would walk across and watch the lonely figure pounding away in the twilight.
He would run beyond the town walls, past the Porta Mantova and San Nicolò and by the vast icehouse rented by the butcher from Carpi, who stored meat there. When the weather turned cold, his men would drag ice and snow into the stone structure and pack it in layers of straw, for they thought icehouse meat could be kept fresh for the best part of a year.
Almost always, Dorando ran alone. The truth was that no one could keep up with him. Whenever he ran, he would dream of his life with Teresa; he would put in the miles to make himself unbeatable. He dreamed of wining the Olympics, marrying his girl and making his mark in Carpi, just as his father had always hoped. Other boys would go to the gym club to get strong; they would take part in boxing or fencing, or work out on the parallel bars or the rings. They had fun, but they weren’t as driven as he was. Dorando was always a loner and when he wanted to make himself strong, he would contrive to find some task that might also earn him money. Sometimes a pastry cook would want a heavy load of charcoal lugged halfway across town. The boy to send for was Dorando, and for him, the few lire pressed into his hand made the exercise even more enjoyable.
In 1905, Dorando had enough ability to warrant a trip overseas and his first international success came at the age of nineteen when he won a 30km race in Paris in pouring rain. He started to look like a real prospect for the ‘Intermediate’ Olympics, planned for Athens the following year. But the Paris race was followed by a row as the French objected to the Italian teenager who spent his entire time running. They muttered that he was really a professional and tried to strip him of his victory.
In November 1905, Dorando received his call-up papers for military service. Already he was something of a celebrity because of his running, and the head of the Italian Athletic Federation, Mario Luigi Mina, stepped in to make sure that he spent his two years of military service with a regiment in Turin that was renowned for giving athletes enough time and space to train and race. So he found himself assigned to the 25th Reggimento Fanteria, which he joined on 3 December. There, he raced in the colours of the Atalanta Club.
It was a wrench for Dorando and Teresa to spend the best part of two years apart. It was a long time, but Turin was not that far from Carpi and Dorando relished the thought of being able to give more time and energy over to his running and being able to train alongside some of the best runners in Italy.
On 31 December 1905, on a 500-metre circuit marked out on the Parco del Valentino, he made an attempt on the Italian one-hour record. A big crowd turned out to watch the new runner attack the record, but it was a filthy night, very cold and windy, and the conditions made record-breaking close to impossible. Even so, he only just missed breaking the Italian record set two years before in November 1903, when he covered 17,137.22 metres.
Military service and the odd snatched trip from Turin to Carpi to spend precious hours with Teresa meant that he cut back on his racing programme in 1906. But this still gave him plenty of time for training and his strength and stamina were increasing by the month.
At the beginning of April, Dorando applied for permission from the War Ministry to go to Rome for Olympic Games’ trials. He secured himself a ticket for the Intermediate Olympics in Athens when he won the trial marathon, said to be over 42km, in 2:42:6 on a beaten earth track at the Piazza di Siena. He could hardly contain his excitement on being congratulated by the Italian King Vittorio Emanuele for his performance in the trial, nor when Queen Elena presented him with a commemorative sash awarded to all the winners of the Italian Championships that year.
Better than that, he was given a whole month off military service to prepare for the Games, which meant that he could spend even more time back in Carpi with Teresa. But this decision prompted some criticism back in the town. Already he was public property, someone chosen to uphold the honour of Italy. They didn’t like the idea that distractions might spoil his Marathon prospects. ‘Why aren’t you out there running?’ they would taunt, if they saw him walking with Teresa. Or they might say, ‘You should be in bed – but go there on your own!’
The club members of La Patria were now fully caught up in his growing success. Magazines they put out in the area played up the triumphs of the working-class boy, a boy with no advantages, who by his own efforts was a champion of the people and looked certain to bring glory and esteem back to Carpi.
Dorando proudly showed the Rome newspapers to his mother, father, Teresa and, it seemed, half the population of Carpi: his name had been added to the list of 59 athletes leaving for Athens.
He left on 20 April 1906, just two days before the start of the Games, on the steamship the Sicilia. His hopes were high. Dorando took with him a small bag and in it he had carefully packed cheese, salami, bread and balsamic vinegar, everything he might need for the voyage and for the race. At last, he was off to the cauldron of Athens.
As the boat pitched in the swell of the Mediterranean he was violently seasick. He couldn’t wait to get his feet back on dry land and start running again.