Many of you will have enjoyed the world athletics meeting in the magnificent Olympic Stadium in Berlin this August. This stadium was built by Adolf Hitler for the 1936 games and held 110,000 people, all seated. This is where Jesse Owens covered himself in glory.

Jesse was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1913. His family moved north some years later. On 25th May 1935 he ran at the U.S Olympic trials for a place on the 1936 Olympic team, and how he ran! In the space of three quarters of an hour he smashed four world records and equalled a fifth.

In the long jump, he leaped 26feet 9inches. This record jump stood for 25 years. With this under his belt, he was a shoo-in for Berlin. In August 1936 he won four gold medals and was the star of the games.

Much has been made by the American and British media about Owens being snubbed by Hitler. This has been proved a lie. What actually happened was Hitler would call all German winners to his box to congratulate them.

The Olympic committee told Hitler he must call up all winners or none at all. Of course, nobody told Hitler what to do and nobody else got an invite to his box. Jesse himself said Hitler did not snub him. After one of his wins, “I passed the chancellor, he waved at me and I waved at him.”

Despite Hitler’s feelings, Owens was cheered enthusiastically by 110,000 people in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium and later ordinary Germans sought his autograph when they saw him in the streets. Owens was allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as whites, an irony at the time, given that blacks in the United States were denied equal rights.

Jesse was to say later his own president never congratulated him and he still had to get on the bus in his home town by the back door or ‘coloured’ section. Because of his skin colour, Owens got some appalling comments; in the American Ambassador’s box Mr Wolfe was heard shouting: “Owens is as black as tar. But what the hell, I was yelling for him.”
When the games ended, the U.S. team sailed back home on the Queen Mary. Jesse’s parents travelled to New York to welcome their son home, but there was no room at the inn– they were refused entry to every hotel because they were black. After a New York ticker-tape parade in his honour, Owens had to ride the freight elevator to attend his own reception at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Jesse Owens was promised everything on his return, even a starring role in a movie called ‘Charlie Chan at the Olympics’, but they were all empty promises.

Unlike today’s track stars, Owens was soon strapped for cash. Newly-married and hard up, Owens took menial jobs like working in a laundry and as a gas station attendant. He also made a living as an entertainer, at one stage racing against dogs and horses in Havana, Cuba. He even ran against his friend, heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. He, of course, graciously let his friend Joe win. What a dreadful time he had trying to earn a living.

Because of World War II, there was a gap of 12 years to the next Olympic Games in London in 1948. But by that time, Jesse Owens’s time had come and gone. Because of his winning smile and wonderful speaking skills, he later got a job for the U.S. Government working with young people. He divided his time from then on, working as a UN goodwill ambassador and training race horses. In the 1960s he went back to Berlin to see his name etched in the granite wall of the Olympic stadium.

He was always fondly remembered by the people of Berlin and in 1984 a street close to the Olympic Stadium in Berlin was renamed Jesse-Owens-Allee, and the Jesse Owens Realschule/ Oberschule (a secondary school) in Berlin-Lichtenberg, was named for him.

In this month’s games, I was delighted to see the entire U.S. track team had the initials J.O. stitched upon their shirt and vest; a fitting tribute to a gentleman and an icon.

After smoking for 35 years, Owens died of lung cancer in Tucson Arizona in 1980, aged 66. His modest tombstone reads ‘Jesse Owens Olympic champion 1936’. We shall leave the last word to the millions of readers of ‘Sports Illustrated’, who voted Jesse the greatest athlete of the twentieth century.

Above: Jesse Owens in action at the Berlin Olympics of 1936.