Home > News

A marathon runner trumped the olden days Tour de France riders by smoking the entire race

Chinese man runs a 3:28 marathon with a cigarette in his mouth the whole time

Photo by: Weibo
November 15, 2022
Share on SMS

Nowadays, it is is well known that smoking cigarettes hinders athletic performance, but it wasn’t always that way. Back n the 1930s it was common to see cyclists taking a drag before a climb in the big races like the Tour de France.

A report in Sports History Weekly descibed how cyclists back then had different strategies when it came to getting ready for the mountains.  “Smoking was believed to open up the lungs and riders would even light up before taking on a big climb.” The sight of several riders lighting up was not bizarre at all. In fact, it was quite common.

Rest stops were not quite the feed zones as we know today, with bidons, musettes, energy drinks, bars and bananas. Hooch was regularly consumed, from brandy to beer and even champagne. Even during the era of Eddy Merckx, the great Belgian admitted to an occasional drag. “I liked to smoke a cigarette during the Tour de France, it calmed my nerves,” according to a Cycling Weekly article.

Of course, those days are long behind and you’d never see a top cyclist bust out a smoke during a race. But on Nov. 6, one runner at the Xin’anjiang Marathon in Jiande, China, was kicking it old school. A runner who goes by the nickname “Uncle Chen” made headlines after he ran a marathon in three hours and 28 minutes while chain-smoking a pack of cigarettes.

According to a report in Canadian Running Magazine, the photos of Chen smoking went viral on the popular Chinese social media app Weibo. Chen finished 574th overall in 3:28:45 out of nearly 1,500 runners.

This was not the first time the 50-year-old runner from Guangzhou was photographed smoking during a marathon— photos of Chen lighting it up surfaced from the 2018 Guangzhou Marathon and the 2019 Xiamen Marathon. In 2018, he clocked in at 3:36, and ran 3:32 in 2019. One anecdotal report notes that Chen apparently only smokes when he runs.

Chen also happens to be an ultramarathoner, who has run distances from 50 km to 12 hours.
Although Chen was not shooting for a Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon while chain-smoking, there isn’t any previous record in place.

Many on Weibo shared their frustration that Chen was allowed to smoke during the race. “This type of behaviour should be banned from the race,” one commented. “I feel bad for the runners around him,” said another.

Either way, it’s unlikely you’re going to see Pog with a pack of Slovenian smokes at the Tour next year.

With files from Canadian Running Magazine