Marathon runners may curse Sherlock Holmes creator

LONDON (Reuters) - As exhausted runners enter the final stages of men's and women's marathons at the London Olympics they may silently curse Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, and a pastry chef who was disqualified from the race in 1908.

While Greek soldier Phidippides only had to run 25 miles from Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C., they will have to keep going for 26 miles and 385 yards, a distance first covered in the 1908 London Olympics.