March 30th, 1970 David Paul Ryder, a twenty-two-year-old post-polio victim from the Battersea, London, UK, set out to walk across the USA on elbow crutches from Santa Monica to New York, total distance of nearly 3,000 miles, accompanied by three companions. The marathon was undertaken to bring attention to the medical profession and handicapped persons throughout the world, the benefits derived from horseback riding as a modern form of physiological and psychological therapy. David had attended the world's first purpose-built center for therapeutic horsemanship in Chigwell, Essex, regularly for six years before becoming capable of crossing a room unaided, let along attempting a marathon of this magnitude.
The story of David's and his accompanying supporters, combined experiences were written in a diary, which described his tremendous personal physical courage and strength of will in completing the walk, averaging nearly twenty-five miles each day for one hundred and twenty-two days. The diary describes many fascinating characters, places and events across the entire route, surviving snowstorms, mudslides, lightening strikes and desert heat. They endured multiple breakdowns, robberies, bar fights and thwarted sexual advances of a lecherous truck driver. Disaster delayed the marathon before the start in Los Angeles when the following camper was burgled and a briefcase containing all cross-country contacts and maps marking the route stolen.
Throughout the crossing there was considered concern about David's hands pressing down for hours across rough crutch handles, which caused huge cracked callouses over both palms and open red blisters on his feet. David was a made a freeman of five cities, including Los Angeles and New York, but his final walk down Broadway drew only a few odd looks from side-walkers, tramps, and addicts huddled in doorways.
Other than the recognition David received in the form of proclamations, keys to major cities and publicity, none of his marathon achievements have ever been permanently recognized in record books or by any official authority. Sadly, this was undoubtedly, a "Forgotten Marathon". John A. Davies