Olympic Gold 1936 by Michael Burgan

Author:Michael Burgan [Burgan, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 978-0-7565-5528-3; 978-0-7565-5532-0; Olympics; Jesse Owens; racism; Nazis; Hitler; 1936; Germany; Leni Riefenstahl; photography; filmmaking
Publisher: Capstone
Published: 2019-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

The second part of Olympia was titled Festival of Beauty and included aquatic events.

In keeping with Goebbels’ aims, Riefenstahl did not make Olympia pure propaganda for the Nazis. That was clear in her footage of the long-jump competition between Owens and Long. But by including the event and others involving black Americans, she defied Goebbels. He had not wanted her to show them at all. But Riefenstahl kept Owens in, and the long jump became a highlight of the first part of Olympia. Her positive treatment of him led Germans to create a little rhyme: “Leni shows the Führer too / all that German film can do / He saw in negative print / how positive the Negro could sprint.”26

The day after Owens’ record-setting long jump, he raced in the 200-meter finals. The race took place on a curved part of the stadium track, not on a straightaway. Owens’ time of 20.7 seconds won him another gold medal and set a record for the event on a curved track.

Most Americans probably assumed the Olympics were then over for Owens. Newspapers reported that he would not be one of the runners in the 400-meter relay. For that event, each athlete carries a baton for 100 meters, then passes the baton to the next runner on his team. As The New York Times reported August 5, “Lawson Robertson, track coach, feels the Ohio State Negro has done just about enough in one Olympics.”27 At that time, the paper said, Robertson wasn’t sure who his four runners would be, but the likely candidates were Marty Glickman, Sam Stoller, Foy Draper, and Frank Wykoff.

To the surprise of many, when it came time for the 400-meter relay, Owens was on the track. Robertson had chosen him and another fast African-American sprinter, Ralph Metcalfe. Hearing that Glickman and Stoller were out, Owens supposedly said, “I’ve already got three gold medals, I don’t need any more.”28 But over the previous few days, he had also told reporters he wouldn’t mind a shot at a fourth medal. And he and his teammates did win the gold. As the largest crowd of the Olympics watched Owens’ last performance of the games, the Americans won with a world-record time of 39.8 seconds.

Many people had called the Berlin Olympics the “Nazi Games.” And the Germans had done well, winning the most medals and the most gold medals. The United States placed second in each category. But Marty Glickman saw it differently. Years later, he said, “I saw that they were Jesse Owens Olympic Games. The myth of Nazi Aryan supremacy was smashed to smithereens by the great non-Aryan athletes.”29

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