The first Olympians of the Kingdom of Serbia

The first participation of the Serbian athletes at the Summer Olympic Games remains somewhat of a mystery, since there survives no record of their results or rankings in the Olympic documentation. This gave rise to a popular belief, still held by some, that Dragutin Tomašević never completed the marathon race. However, a directly opposite claim was made in a “Report of the Olympic Club on the Competitions in Sweden”, which ought to be regarded as an official account, dated 12 August 1912 and addressed to the Minister of Education and Religious Affairs.
Quoted below is a section of the report dealing with the rankings of the first Serbian Olympians (complete with all the orthographic errors and inconsistencies, the greatest of which is the listing of marathon runners according to their nationalities numbering two Serbian runners).
“… on 6 June short distance races of 100 meters were held. All the runners were divided into 17 sections, 5 - 6 runners each our runner MILOŠEVIĆ ran in the eighth section in which also ran 1 Austrian (Vigoda) 1 Dane (Handorston), 1. Swede (Lindberg), 1 Frenchman (Rapin), who withdrew from the race immediately. The result was as following: the first was the Dane, Second the Swede, and they entered as the participants the main races; the third very close to the second (0.50m) came our Milošević and the fourth came the Austrian very close to Milošević. After the race Milošević suffered stomach poisoning and stayed in Stockholm another 10 days to recover.
On 14 June marathon races of 40,200km were held. 98 runners entered the race. 62 ran. There were: Swedes 12, Englishmen and Africans 16, Russians 10, Austrians 6, Hungarians 2, Danes 2, Norwegians 6, Finns 2, Chilean 1, Americans 12, Frenchmen 10, Italians 4, Serbs 2, Canadians 8, Portuguese 2, Greek 1, Japanese 1, Australian 1. Our runner TOMAŠEVIĆ came in 37^th completing the race. None of the Russians, Italians, Chileans, Austrians, Portuguese, Finns, Danes, Japanese completed the race. Apart from them a larger number of Swedes, Frenchmen and Austrians also fell down along the course. Therefore it was clear that our runner was one of the better runners. It was deemed so in the managing body, and Baron Coubertin whole-heartedly congratulated us “on the success of our young Committee”. It was therefore proved that our runners were worthy competitors. Swedish papers published a story that dealt with our runner, who would not drop out of the race, when a Russian invited him to join him in a car”…