Champagne, cocaine and some very long walks: when pedestrianism ruled the sporting world

Crowds once flocked to see ambling athletes pull of amazing feats of stamina. Edward Payson Weston was chief among them More than $1.4bn has been staked on prediction markets for this week’s US midterm elections, according to CNN. Though a lot of people are about to win – or lose – a lot of money, it’s hard to imagine any wagers as consequential as the election bet that birthed a sporting craze spearheaded by a chancer who walked and talked his way into becoming one of the greatest athletic stars of the 19th century.

Before ultrarunning, there was ultrawalking: pedestrianism. The Victorian-era fad started with laddish banter that got out of hand. A 21-year-old door-to-door bookseller named Edward Payson Weston made a wager with a friend that if Abraham Lincoln were elected president in 1860, Weston would walk 478 miles from the Massachusetts state capitol in Boston to the US Capitol in Washington. In less than 10 days. “It was simply a banter between ourselves