Jesse Owens made history eighty years ago this week, winning four gold medals in track and field events at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, an achievement not matched until Carl Lewis won the same four events (100 m, 200 m, 4×100 m relay, long jump) in Los Angeles in 1984.
History has also credited Owens with a qualified victory in the racial-political arena. The Nazi attempt to appropriate the 1936 Games as a demonstration of Aryan superiority was mathematically successful — Germany won eighty-nine medals, thirty-three more than the second-place United States — but even the German crowds cheered the Owens victories. That he did not use his moment in the spotlight to vigorously denounce Hitler’s racist propaganda has, say some commentators, tarnished his legacy.
Owens did speak out on the topic later, especially at home, where the same racial discrimination that had disadvantaged him during his record-setting college track career continued to shape his life. At the ’36 Olympics he had been approached by Adi Dassler, who wanted him to use his new track shoes. After Owens did so, helping launch the Adidas brand to international success and making him the first male African-American athlete to gain such sponsorship, he hoped that his own fortunes might improve. But as David Goldblatt notes in his just-published The Games: A Global History of the Olympics, no southern newspaper had even carried a photo of Owens or any of the other African-American medalists, and even the assistant coach of the American track team attributed their achievements to being “closer to the primates than the white man.” As Owens bitterly acknowledged decades later, he was eventually reduced to pumping gas and racing against horses to earn a living:
People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals. There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway.
Usain Bolt, one of the favorites to win next week’s 100 m event, reportedly makes more than $20 million a year, and if he chooses to stay in the Rio Athletes’ Village he will be alongside many other athlete-millionaires. In Players: The Story of Sports and Money, and the Visionaries Who Fought to Create a Revolution, Matthew Futterman explains how, to use his introductory example, the Dallas Cowboys went from paying their star quarterback in 1971 (Roger Staubach) a salary of $25,000 a year to giving their current star quarterback (Tony Romo) a six-year contract worth $108 million:
In the span of a generation, everything about the sports business changed . . . In this world money determines everything from who plays for what teams, to how dynasties are created. It determines how the stars of tomorrow are made. It shapes the star-centric style of play that dominates many of the world’s top sports leagues. It even determines how big a commitment children and their families are expected to give their travel soccer team. This world is about the business of creating champions in societies conditioned to worship them . . .
In his upcoming From Russia with Drugs, David Walsh shows how the business of creating Olympic champions can lead not only to institutionalized corruption but personal tragedy. The title’s allusion to 007-style intrigue is more than casual, given that the full story of what happened in Russia relies heavily on the revelations made by Vitaliy Stepanov, a former member of the country’s anti-doping squad, and by his wife, Yuliya, a former Russian track star. Their decision to “turn Judas” (Vladimir Putin’s term) put their careers, marriage, and even lives at risk.
True amateurism in sports may now be but a sepia memory, but one of its defining moments, says Duncan Hamilton in For the Glory, is Eric Liddell’s decision at the 1924 Olympics not to run his 100 m heat because it was scheduled on a Sunday, violating his religious beliefs. Liddell won gold at 400 m and then chose missionary work over fame:
Overnight Liddell could have become one of the richest of “amateur” sportsmen. But he wouldn’t accept offers to write newspaper columns or make public speeches for cash. He wouldn’t say yes to prestigious teaching sinecures, refusing the benefits of a smart address and a high salary. He wouldn’t endorse products. He wouldn’t be flattered into business or banking either. He made only trivial concessions to his celebrity. He allowed his portrait to be painted. He let a gardener name a gladiolus in his honor at the Royal Horticultural Show. In everything else Liddell followed his conscience, choosing to do what was right because to do anything else, he felt, would sully the gift God had given him to run fast.
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Sig Nordal 