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Jesse Owens (Buckeye Bullet, 4 Time Olympic Gold Medalist, 8-time NCAA Champion)

Saw that article today and meant to post a link myself. Can you imagine the press coverage today if an athlete set FOUR world records on the same day?

We tend to focus on football and occassionally basketball, but with Jesse Owens and Jack Nicklaus OSU has two athletes who are arguably the best of all time in their sport.
 
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L-Rod, Thanks for reminding us. It's one of the all-time great achievements in sports, and doesn't get enough recognition. And his performances under the pressure of the Berlin Olympics were amazing. He's truly a great Buckeye.
 
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I had Larry Snyder, Owens' coach, for a phys ed coaching class. He told us that he picked Jesse up at his rooming house on Thursday morning prior to the Big 10 meet, driving the high jumper (I think his name was Dave Bing) and the half miler Charlie Beck-something... sorry bad attack of CRS... along with him in a Model A. Jesse had slipped on the steps and fallen to the bottom and hurt his back in the process. Snyder taped a couple of hot water bottles to his back, wrapped him in several blankets and a cape from the football team and placed him in the rumble seat for the long drive to Ann Arbor. Bing won the high jump, Beck-something won the half mile and scored in the quarter, Jesse did his thing and the Buckeyes won the Big 10 championship with just three athletes.

I saw Jesse in 1957, when his daughter, Maureen, was the homecoming queen. He was introduced before the game and took a lap in his track uni. He still looked capable of winning a few Olympic medals. He was given the chance to introduce his daughter and said to her and the capacity crowd, "This kind of day could only take place in America..." that from a proud man who had been shunned by Hitler and lived in an America where he was not free to travel everywhere, where segregation was a way of life and yet he saw the promise of what we could be.
I love Ohio State football and have fond memories of many great athletes who represented the school in that sport, but Jesse Owens is the finest athlete, and one of the finest persons, the school ever produced.
 
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Link

Owens Owned These Games

By Bud Greenspan, Special to The Times
August 3, 2006

It was 70 years ago today that Jesse Owens won the 100 meters in the Berlin Olympics, on the way to four gold medals over the next seven days, and his achievements are as alive now as they were when he electrified the world.

In 1964, I decided to take Owens back to Germany to film him for my first one-hour documentary, "Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin." I was taking a big chance personally. But I believed his story had to be told then, as it bears repeating now.
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Before the 1936 Games, there was much doubt as to whether the United States would send a team to Berlin.

Many did not want to go because of Germany's Nazi government.

The United States Olympic Committee sent President Avery Brundage on a fact-finding trip to Berlin. He came back with a glowing report about how well the Nazis had prepared for the Games and he received Joseph Goebbels' and Adolf Hitler's promise that no Jewish persecutions or propaganda would take place during the Games.

Owens did not have to worry about his stay in Berlin. The German people and press loved him.

It is well known that he received more than 100 marriage proposals. The fact that he was married with a 2 1/2 -year-old daughter was no hindrance to Frauleins who, without question, made him the most popular athlete in Berlin.

Whenever he took a walk, he was followed by fans. The crowd responded to his preliminary victories as if the gold medal had been won. After his gold-medal victory in the 100 meters, he received a 10-minute standing ovation.

It was that victory that began the myth that persists today. Did Hitler deliberately avoid congratulating Owens as he had other gold medal winners?

Through the years, Owens and I had many talks about the stories that followed his 100. It turned out to be one of the all-time great Olympic myths.

On the afternoon of the first day of competition, two Germans and one Finnish athlete were ushered to Hitler's box, where the German dictator congratulated the gold-medal winners in full view of 100,000 spectators.

Later that same afternoon, Cornelius Johnson of the United States won the high jump. As the U.S. anthem was about to be played, it began to rain and Hitler and his entourage quickly left the stadium. Johnson did not get a greeting from the Fuhrer.

The next day, Owens won the 100. The American press went to work quickly and newspapers throughout the country headlined, "HITLER SNUBS JESSE."

To reporters who would listen, Owens was adamant in refuting the story. If anybody was snubbed, he said, it was Cornelius Johnson. Owens could convince no one he was not snubbed. After years of denying he was snubbed, Owens capitalized on the myth and soon Hitler's "snub" became part of his speeches.

When we finally finished with the film and interviewing of Owens for the documentary, I asked him every possible question imaginable. He answered with truth and also in intimate details of his life. Finally I said, "Jesse, are you sure you told me everything?" and he nodded.

But then he added, "There was one thing I didn't tell you about, but it might be interesting."

Owens then told me the story of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, the great African American entertainer. This is exactly how he told me the story, and I wonder how in heaven did he not know it was a good story.

Owens returned to the United States, given receptions in Cleveland and New York. He was greeted with a ticker-tape parade, one of the few times a black athlete was so honored. Thousands of spectators lined the streets and Owens took the time to warmly shake hands and shout a few words to the well-wishers.

When the parade was halted for a few minutes in New York, Robinson, who produced the homecoming festivities, rushed to Owens' car and handed him a brown paper bag, which he stuffed in his pocket.

Later that day, he took a train to New York from Cleveland. Having been without food all day, he remembered the bag, which he thought held a sandwich.

Inside was a note that read, "From your friends in Harlem." Owens was shocked, for in the bag were 10 $1,000 bills.

Bud Greenspan is an Olympic historian and documentarian who is working on his ninth official Olympic film, this one from the 2006 Winter Games in Turin. He also is developing a made-for-television movie on the 1936 Summer Olympics.
 
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So, did Hitler congratulate Jesse or not? It is unclear from the story.

I was curious myself so I did a quick internet search. From Wikipedia:

On the first day, Hitler shook hands only with the German victors and then left the stadium (some claim this was to avoid having to shake hands with Cornelius Johnson, who was African-American, but according to a spokesman Hitler's exit had been pre-scheduled). Olympic committee officials then insisted Hitler greet each and every medalist or none at all. Hitler opted for the latter and skipped all further medal presentations. [1] [2] In his autobiography (The Jesse Owens Story, 1970) Owens recounted how Hitler later stood up and waved to him anyway:

When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany.

So, the answer to your question no, Hitler did not give Owens a face-to-face congratulations but did recognize Jesse's achievement.
 
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There's also a new book about Owens and Berlin Olympics. I should be getting it from my library in a couple of weeks.

Triumph : the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics, by Jeremy Schaap.

COVER_FULL
 
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CPD

Owens' tracks linger in his hometown


Wednesday, February 14, 2007Bill Livingston
Plain Dealer Columnist
Jeremy Schaap's new book about Jesse Owens, "Tri umph," makes it clear Owens moved among us in this city - albeit very swiftly - not as saint, but as a man possessed of the same hopes and fears as everyone else.
Schaap's book brings, most notably, the news that Owens actively lobbied for his inclusion on the 4 x 100 meter relay in Berlin at Adolf Hitler's Olympics in order to get a fourth gold medal. Jewish members of the relay team, including the late Marty Glickman, who became a famous sports broadcaster, were removed from the team to avoid offending the anti-Semitic Nazis. It has usually been assumed that Owens protested the move.

Cont'd...
 
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Triumph : the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics, by Jeremy Schaap.

I finished reading this book last night. It was a good read - it's a relatively short book that primarily covers the period from the track meet in Ann Arbor in 1935 through the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

I haven't read any of Jesse's autobiographies (I understand there are 3), so there was some information that was new to me. I wasn't aware that Ohio State placed Jesse Owens on academic suspension after he failed a psychology course in the fall quarter of 1935. He missed part of the 1936 track season because of this.

The book also goes into detail regarding the movement to have the American team boycott the 1936 Winter (at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the German Alps) and Summer games. It came down to a very close vote.

It chronicles the social and political events of the time, including what was happening in Europe, as well as the Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fight that Louis lost a few months before the Games.

It also points out interesting facts about the 4 world records in that day in Ann Arbor. He tied the record in the 100 yards by running 9.4 offiicially (2 timers had 9.3, one had 9.4, but the slowest time was the standard for the official measurement). He broke the records in the broad jump (now called the long jump), the 220-yard sprint, and the 220-yard hurdles. But his times in those 220-yard events were actually faster than the world records in the 200-meter distances, which are about 4 feet shorter.

So using the official times, even at the slightly longer disctance, would give him 6 World records set in less than an hour!

Now I want to see the movie "Olympia", shot by Leni Riefenstahl at those Games in Berlin.
 
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