Ultrarunner races against horses and achieves TV stardom–in 1958

Runners of a certain age may remember the TV show “To Tell the Truth,” which aired on CBS from 1956 to 1968. The ultrarunning blogger Davy Crockett has tweeted about an episode that reveals a curious relic of ultrarunning history–an ultrarunner from New York City named Edo Romagnoli appeared on the show after racing against four horses in a 157-mile (251K) race in Utah in the summer of 1958. 

RELATED: British writer tweets historic Westminster Bridge sprint

60 years ago in 1958, an ultrarunner from NYC, Edo Romagnoli, appeared on the show "To Tell the Truth" after he raced against 4 horses in a 157-mile race in Utah. He DNFed at about mile 118. https://t.co/Lk4pl2vQ5L#ultrarunning #horses #ultrachat #utah

— UltraRunningHistory (@UltraRunningHis) December 2, 2018

The episode begins with the three challengers stating, one after the other, “My name is Edo Romagnoli.” It’s the panellists’ job to stump them with questions, and then guess which one is the real guest. Finally the moderator says, “Will the real Edo Romagnoli please stand up?”

Romagnoli’s race against horses in Utah

As the segment begins, moderator Bud Collyer reads Romagnoli’s affidavit, describing the feat that got him on the show: “I, Edo Romagnoli, am a New York City policeman. I am also a distance runner. In the past few years I have won a number of marathon championships. Last week I ran in the longest race of my career–157 miles. There were seven runners competing in the race. Three of them were men, and the other four were horses.” 

According to Crockett’s Ultrarunning History blog, which describes the event in some detail, man vs. horse races have held at some regularity throughout history in an attempt to prove that humans’ endurance is superior to that of horses.

Humans consistently lost to horses in endurance tests 

A race from Salt Lake City to Roosevelt, Utah was staged in 1957 between two horses and two elite college runners from Brigham Young University, with one man dropping out after 55 miles and the other after 110 miles, his legs dangerously swollen. (Both horses finished the course after 57 hours, and were so exhausted they refused to eat.) On July 22 of the following year a similar event was organized in the same location, with Romagnoli, 37, one of three runners selected out of 35 applicants. 

Romagnoli DNF’s

In answering questions from celebrity panellist Polly Bergen, Romagnoli describes how his race went: “When I stopped after 118 miles, I was ahead of two horses who had quit completely. Two men were far outdistanced. I was 15 miles ahead of the third horse, and I was about two miles behind the horse that eventually won.” So much for proving that humans’ endurance is greater than horses’. Even though Romagnoli dropped out at 189K, only one of the runners behind him made it that far before also dropping out.

It comes out that the horses had riders, and that both runners and horses were preceded by jeeps pulling trailers, so they could stop to rest and eat whenever they liked.  

Panellist Keenan Wynn gets laughs from the studio audience for asking, “Do the horses have to assume a kneeling starting position?” (Collyer quips, “The answer is ‘neigh, neigh.'”) 

In an interesting piece of irony, the main sponsor of the show is Marlborough cigarettes.

The only mention we could find online about Romagnoli’s marathon exploits was a Canadian connection: he finished second in the St-Hyacinthe Marathon in Quebec in 1952. 

Ultrarunning History, which reports on many other human vs. horse endurance races, reports that earlier this year Romagnoli was still alive at age 97 and living in New York.