“The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals.The struggles within yourself – the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us – that’s where it’s at.”
Jesse Owens
Introduction
The athletic track has long provided us with hours of thrilling sporting moments. The buzz and thrill of this environment makes your heart race and a fever pitch that is driven into a momentous crescendo. Long as the spotlight been on those who try to win medals and break records for their country, training for hours, days, months and years to reach the peak of their capability and transform form into glory. Long before well known brands put their names to sponsorship, marketing and advertising, this hallowed track was a very different place with only a few daring to push themselves to the maximum and attempt to become the master of all they survey.
The Architect
One such athlete who is etched into the history books of time is a certain Jesse Owens. A black athlete who competed at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, observed by the menacing gaze of the German dictator Adolf Hitler. A man who peddled an evil falsehood of an Aryan race and whose reign nearly sent democracy into complete free fall. Yet Owens was made of a hardened metal. A man who had fought for his existence all his life. Born in 1913 in Oakville, Alabama, the youngest of ten children, three girls and seven boys, his father Henry was a sharecropper and Jesse was the grandson of a slave. Given the Christian name James, he adopted the name Jesse when his school teacher misheard him when he replied that his name was JC with a deep southern accent.
Moving their family from the Deep South to the North of America for a better life. Owens soon realised that he didn’t want to follow his father and older brother into the steel mill and during spells at Fairmount Junior High School and East Technical High School, a young Jesse realised he had a
natural talent for running. Like so many, he would have to work his way through the menial jobs before his ambition became a reality. He delivered groceries, loaded freight cars, and worked in a shoe repair shop whilst practicing on the track with his coach Charles Riley before school.
It was at Fairmount Junior High School that he would meet his childhood sweetheart and future wife Minnie Ruth Solomon. Jesse was 15 and she was 13. They dated throughout high school and married in 1935, having three daughters, Gloria, Marlene and Beverly. They remained married until Owens’ death in 1980. Jessie sent tongues wagging when he equalled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the hundred yards dash and long-jumped 24 feet 9.5 inches (7.56 m) at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago whilst attending East Technical High School in Cleveland.
The Race for Glory
Attending Ohio State University, Jesse became known as the “Buckeye Bullet”. Coached by Larry Snyder, Owens won a record eight individual NCAA championships , four in 1935 and the same in 1936. A staggering gold achievement. Yet life was still hard. He was living in an era where racial tension was at its height with Jessie having to dine and stay at “blacks-only” restaurants and hotels. Yet this courageous, young, black man decided to rip down barriers and made the Herculean decision to compete at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. At a time when the Nazi regime was striding out of infancy and setting its sights on world domination. Along with his US teammates, Owens sailed on the SS Manhattan to the Summer games.
Wearing the shoes provided by the founder of Adidas, Adi Dassler, Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik shoes, Jesse set the stadium alight in front of an estimated audience of 90,000, winning gold medals in the 100 meters, 200 meters, 4 x 100 men’s relay and the high jump. His last win snubbed by Hitler as he shook the hands of the German victors and then promptly left the stadium. At one point Adolf was seen to be rocking backwards and forwards in the stand. An act that led many to believe that the dictator was taking a cocktail of pills to get him through the day. The mocking wave and Nazi salute to Owens, a sign of the deep hatred he had for anyone that didn’t fit into his Master Race. Yet despite this toxic regime, Jessie was allowed to stay in hotel accommodation with other white athletes. A stark contrast to his return to America where he had to use the trade elevator at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, barred from the main doors and not invited to the White House by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Despite this kickbacks, he still became a prominent campaigner for the Republicans at the 1936 Presidential Election. Owens tempted by the endorsement offers, stayed in the USA and didn’t follow his teammates to Sweden. He was punished by his country, stripping him of his amateur status and hence ending his athletics’ career.
Owens struggled to find work in a deeply racist country. He took jobs as a gas station attendant, playground janitor and as a manager of a dry cleaning firm. He ended up filing for bankruptcy and prosecuted for tax evasion in 1966. Yet it didn’t stop endorsing brand names like Quaker Oats, Sears and Roebuck and Johnson & Johnson. A visitor to several Olympics, Jesse died in 1980 after a battle with lung cancer in Tucson, Arizona at the age of 66. A man who will always be remembered as a trailblazer, someone ahead of his time and who helped widen a tunnelled vision of how sport should be carried out.
