Francisco Lázaro was the first Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 Olympic marathon

Marathon

The marathon is a long-distance running event with an official distance of 42.195 kilometres , that is usually run as a road race...

 runner and standard bearer of the Portuguese legation in the nation's first ever Olympic games, the 1912 Summer Olympics

1912 Summer Olympics

The 1912 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the V Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Stockholm, Sweden, between 5 May and 27 July 1912. Twenty-eight nations and 2,407 competitors, including 48 women, competed in 102 events in 14 sports...

, in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, Sweden.

Like all the olympic athletes of his time, Lázaro was an amateur

Amateur

An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training....

 sportsman, and his actual job was as a carpenter in an automobile factory in Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

. Prior to the Olympics, he had run and won three national marathon championships in his native country.

Lázaro was the first athlete to die during an Olympic event, after collapsing at the 29 kilometer mark of the marathon. The cause of death was thought to be severe dehydration

Dehydration

In physiology and medicine, dehydration is defined as the excessive loss of body fluid. It is literally the removal of water from an object; however, in physiological terms, it entails a deficiency of fluid within an organism...

 due to the high temperature registered at the time of the race; later it was discovered Lázaro covered large portions of his body with wax

Wax

thumb|right|[[Cetyl palmitate]], a typical wax ester.Wax refers to a class of chemical compounds that are plastic near ambient temperatures. Characteristically, they melt above 45 °C to give a low viscosity liquid. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in organic, nonpolar solvents...

 to prevent sunburn

Sunburn

A sunburn is a burn to living tissue, such as skin, which is produced by overexposure to ultraviolet radiation, commonly from the sun's rays. Usual mild symptoms in humans and other animals include red or reddish skin that is hot to the touch, general fatigue, and mild dizziness. An excess of UV...

s, but eventually the wax impermeability restricted the athlete's natural perspiration, leading to a serious body fluid electrolytic imbalance.