Jesse Owens: Olympic Legend
Sport and history, as most of you will probably know, are two sure-fire ways to pique my interest. It seemed a no-brainer then, for my first blog post to combine the two. Jesse Owens is one of the greatest athletes in Olympic history. The reputation and legacy he crafted at the 1936 Berlin Olympic games has endured for decades. In 1999 he made the final six-man shortlist for the BBC’s Sport’s Personality of the Century – which was famously won by Muhammed Ali. Across the pond, ESPN ranked him as the sixth greatest North American athlete of the 20th Century, becoming the highest-ranked track and field athlete in the process. Back in 1936, his performances were headline news for more reasons than the medals they earned him. It was the way these performances were received or, perhaps more accurately, not received by the politicians of both Germany and the United States which fuelled much of the discussion surrounding Jesse Owens’ personal experience at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Whilst Owens’ efforts may have whipped up the adoration of those watching on in the Olympiastadion, his athletic prowess only served to aggravate the powers that be both in the Third Reich and back in the United States.
Jesse Owens arrived in Berlin at the age of 22 on the wave of immense expectation and excitement. A wave that had been whipped up after his exceptional 1935 season. The pinnacle of this season had been his performances on 25th May at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan when competing for Ohio State University. Everyone’s favourite athletics commentator Michael Johnson described it as ‘one of the most amazing feats in any sport’. In 45 minutes Owens had broken five world records and equalled another. It was a ridiculously impressive accomplishment. But the ridiculousness of it does not stop there. Owens did all this whilst carrying an injury that was severe enough to warrant his coach assessing him after every event to make sure he was fit to continue. This story is worthy of a blog itself, and perhaps it will get one later down the line, but for now let’s use it as evidence that the Ohio State athlete had proven himself to be a special talent well before Team USA touched down in Berlin.
Owens’ first event was the 100 metres. It would become perhaps Jesse’s most memorable victory in Berlin. Owens finished in a time of 10.3 seconds, equalling his own world record, beating fellow American Ralph Metcalfe and the German Erich Borchmeyer in the process. His victory should have been the centre of attention, but the actions of Adolf Hitler would make this impossible. It is widely assumed that Hitler specifically refused to receive Jesse Owens after winning the 100m, which was customary for the Head of State of the host nation to do at the time. This is not strictly true. In fact, Hitler was not in the stadium at the time of Owens’ ceremony. Whilst he may not have snubbed Owens directly, he had snubbed another black American gold medal winner on the first day of athletic competition, High Jumper Cornelius Johnson. It was stated by a Nazi spokesman that Hitler had not snubbed Cornelius, instead he had left the stadium for a pre-arranged engagement. There is no evidence to support this statement, unsurprisingly. After being reprimanded by Olympic officials, Hitler was told that he had to receive every winner or none at all. Hitler, at risk of being photographed acknowledging the achievements of somebody who was not white, decided on the latter. As a result, Owens was not officially greeted by Hitler after his momentous achievement. So, the snub was not a direct snub of Jesse Owens, but of all races Hitler deemed inferior to the Aryan race.
In his (admittedly notoriously untrustworthy) memoirs, high-ranking Nazi Albert Speer stated ‘[Hitler] was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvellous coloured American runner, Jesse Owens.’ I’ve cut the quote short because the words which followed are better left in the 1930s. Whilst his memoirs largely distort his own involvement in the Nazi regime, Speer was close to Hitler and it is probable he discussed Owens’ victory with Hitler. On this occasion at least, it is not difficult to believe Speer. Despite this damning personal testimony, there were multiple eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen Hitler salute Owens for his achievements on another day. Despite all the noise this did-he-didn’t-he story conjured up in the press, there was one man who was not interested in the slightest. Owens had not come all the way to Germany to start a political debate, he had come to win gold medals.
Owens was victorious in his second event, the Long Jump, despite some below par performances in the early stages of qualification. After fouling his first two attempts, Owens was staring down the barrel of sporting embarrassment. He had just one attempt left to save his Long Jump Olympics journey and with his previous attempts failing to hit the mark, he needed help. One man was willing to provide it. Carl Ludwig ‘Luz’ Long was the European record holder and supposed to be Germany’s gold medal man. Luz Long typified what the Nazi’s wanted from their men; athletic, tall, blonde. He was the man Hitler believed would take down Jesse Owens and show the world that the Aryan man was superior to the Black man. What Adolf Hitler did not account for was Long’s sportsmanship. In between Owens’ second and third jump, Long took time out of his preparation to give Owens some advice. He told his American rival to set a mental mark a foot behind the board to jump from. Simple enough, but it would have a significant impact on the final standings. After both qualified through the preliminary stage, the pair put on a vintage display in the final. Luz Long finished with an impressive 7.87m. It would not be enough to beat Owens though. Just six centimetres behind the world record that Owens himself set at Ann Arbor in 1935, the 8.06m he managed to produce was still enough to blitz Long’s effort. It might not have been a world record, but it was an Olympic one. Luz Long’s sporting advice had cost him the gold medal that the Nazi Party so desperately craved. If Long regretted this advice though, he did not show it. Luz linked arms with Jesse after the medal ceremony was completed and the pair walked round the Olympiastadion for a lap of honour.
The genuine adoration that Owens had now accrued from the largely German crowd was clear to hear when he competed in his third event, the 200m. As he made his way to his lane, Jesse Owens’ name rang out around the stadium. Owens went on record after the Berlin Olympics to say that he had never been received by a crowd in the way he was that summer and with no Germans in the final six, the bumper crowd made it clear who they wanted to win. After an explosive start, there was only going to be one winner. He finished with an Olympic record-breaking time of 20.7 seconds, 0.4 seconds faster than second place who, as with the 100m, was a fellow American. This time it was Matthew Mackenzie Robinson who had to settle for silver. That was Owens’ third gold medal and it was supposed to be his last. However, the racist ideology of the Nazi Party would rear its ugly head once again, as Hitler played politics with the world’s greatest sporting event.
The United States’ 4x100m relay team was supposed to be made up of Foy Draper, Marty Glickman, Sam Stoller and Frank Wykoff. On the day of the event an emergency meeting for the relay team was called; Owens and Metcalfe, the 100m runner up, were also invited. The meeting was held by Lawson Robertson, the US Olympics athletics coach and Dean Cromwell, his assistant. According to Glickman, Robertson told the group that he and the coaching team had heard ‘very strong rumours that the Germans were hiding their best sprinters’ for the relay final. To combat this threat, the coaches decided that Glickman and Stoller were to be replaced by Owens and Metcalfe. Owens protested this decision, explaining that he had won his three medals and that Glickman and Stoller deserved the chance to win their own. The response to Owens’ protestations was a finger shoved in his face and a command to do as he was told. Owens relented. The reasoning behind the decision appeared non-sensical and baseless. Why would the German team withdraw their best athletes from the 100m or 200m, when they knew doing so would give Owens an even better chance of winning gold? It was obviously an outcome Hitler wanted to avoid. In later years it would come out that the reasoning given to the runners was a fabrication. When I tell you that the two athletes were the only Jewish athletes in the USA athletics team, the ‘rationale’ behind the decision becomes clear. Hitler and his devoted Nazi inner circle unquestionably despised the sight of a Black athlete winning golds at their games. However, the elite of the Nazi Party knew they had no choice but to accept the success of black athletes, albeit through gritted teeth and without formally acknowledging that success. Having Jewish athletes achieving success in such a high-profile race was a more troubling proposition for their racist regime. It would have been humiliating for the Nazi’s image in Germany to see two Jewish men standing on the podium clutching their gold medals, having beaten four Aryan Germans in the process. For that reason, the Nazis were insistent that no Jewish athletes were to compete in the 4x100m relay. Robertson and Cromwell appeased those demands; thus, Owens and Metcalfe were included in the US team and Glickman and Stoller were dropped. The Americans won comfortably, and Owens claimed his fourth medal of the games. But the final gold never sat as comfortably around Owens’ neck as the first three had done. Just nine athletes of Jewish heritage won medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and none of them were in major events.
Owens returned to America a hero for many. In New York City a ticker-tape parade was thrown in his honour. There he was greeted by the city’s mayor, Fiorello La Guardia. Whilst Owens was soaking in the adoration of those in attendance, he was handed a paper bag. It was not until after the parade was over and he was leaving his car that Owens realised there was money in it. $10,000 in cash. Owens may have been a hero to some Americans, but not every American felt that way. That division in public opinion was also to be found in the politicians as well. Owens might have received the public support of La Guardia, but he did not get it from the US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. He received no invitation to the White House, not even a message of congratulations. Owens was justifiably hurt by FDR’s cold shoulder. Speaking at a Republican rally in Kansas City on 15 October 1936 where he was endorsing the Republican candidate Alf Landon, Owens said ‘Hitler didn’t snub me – it was our President who snubbed me. The President didn’t even send me a telegram.’ With the benefit of hindsight, you’d hope Owens would be less quick to defend Hitler. For a certainty he knew nothing of Hitler’s anti-Semitic incursion on Team USA’s selection policy. Nor had he any idea of what Hitler thought about him behind the scenes. However, his quickness to use Hitler as a comparison to FDR’s response to his achievements speaks volumes about the American president’s attitudes. It was not particularly shocking for the four-time gold medal winner to be snubbed. The treatment of Owens was sadly indicative of the treatment more broadly of ethnic minorities in the States.
Despite the mixed reception he received from his fellow Americans at the time, the legacy Jesse Owens created for himself at the 1936 Berlin Olympics has endured for decades. His four golds will go down as one of the most impressive sporting feats in Track and Field history.
Sources:
Did Hitler Really Snub Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?: https://www.thoughtco.com/did-hitler-really-snub-jesse-owens-4064326
85th anniversary of Jesse Owens’ unmatched world record spree:
85th anniversary of Jesse Owens’ unmatched world record spree | NEWS | World Athletics
Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics in 1936: https://youtu.be/1inifMJ0xio
Marty Glickman - 1936 Berlin Olympics and Jesse Owens: https://youtu.be/14HeJUQb6xQ
