The athlete who shattered Hitler’s ‘theory'

'I always loved running. It was something you could do by yourself and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs.'

BORN on September 12, 1913, in Alabama, Jesse Owens was the youngest of 10 children born to sharecroppers Henry and Emma Owens. During the Great Migration, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he got an opportunity to attend an integrated school. Unlike Alabama, segregation did not exist in Cleveland. Many of his classmates were white, so were his teachers. As a child, Owens used to race with kids in his neighbourhood. His talent was noticed by a track-and-field coach, Charles Rey, in school.

Running gave Owens a sense of freedom. By the time he was in high school, he had begun to make a name for himself and quickly became a star in the 100 metres, broad jump and hurdles. But, outside of track, certain things were out of bounds for black people — they were not served in restaurants, nor were they allowed in most movie theatres. Jesse was no exception. A student of Ohio State University, he was not allowed to live on the campus. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going, no one knew that better than Owens, who decided to fight the injustice on the track, which was a great equaliser. And there he excelled.

Amid the Great Depression in the US and the rise of Nazism in Germany, Owens participated in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which turned him into a sports icon. Apart from emerging as one of the greatest athletes, he became the face of equality and sportsman spirit, debunking the myth of racial superiority. It was a time of hostility and turbulence. No rival country would miss an opportunity to pin the opponent in any field, leave alone sports. Something similar was planned by the Führer. For Hitler, it was an opportunity to display German heft to the world and use the Games as a platform to propagate his theory of Aryan supremacy. Non-Aryans were seen as impure and lesser humans by the Nazis. Obsessed with the idea of 'racial purity', he created a hierarchy of 'races', with the Aryans at the top and Jews, gypsies and blacks at the bottom. However, things didn’t go his way as Owens took the world of sports by storm and shattered Hitler's superiority surmise.

Owens won the 100m race in 10.3 seconds, equalling the world record. In 45 minutes, he made three world records and tied another. In all, he won four gold medals and became the most successful athlete of the Games. Tradition calls for the leader of the host country to congratulate the gold medal winner, but Hitler refused to do so. 'Do you really think, I will allow myself to be photographed shaking hands with a Negro?' he said with contempt.

In 1976, President Gerald Ford presented Owens with the Medal of Freedom, the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a civilian.

President George Bush called his victories in Berlin an unrivalled athletic triumph, but more than that, a triumph for all humanity.

A smoker for 35 years, Owens died of lung cancer at the age of 66, on March 31, 1980. Four years later, a street in Berlin was renamed in his honour. Life had come a just circle.