SterJour Notable Moment of Sport #1: Jesse Owens!

The Sternal Journal

I'm writing about sports. This really is the end. [JK it's uplifting]

Sternal Journalists!


Little by little, I'm wrestling these dispatches back earlier into the week and I'm excited to finally, officially, actually start my journey into...

THE 98 NOTABLE MOMENTS IN SPORTING HISTORY

This is a reference to a list of events I compiled from a Twitter thread helmed by my girlfriend's dad, who is a more-than-notable sports journalist, and with whom I have a friendly running joke about how little I know about and care about sports. You can read about that here.

And since I do want to care about sports (or understand better why people care about them), I'm watching them all, starting back in 1936, with the four gold medals of...

Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympic Games!

This is a wonderful start for me because I am a former track ATHLETE (If you don't believe me, just last night, I had a stress dream about being late for practice and then only being able to crawl during the workout).

When I first saw this on the list, I figured it would be a skip because they couldn't possibly have footage of the 1936 Olympics, right?

Wrong! Not only do they have them, they were filmed by infamous Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl for her (propaganda) film, Olympia. This is both insane and a perfect entree to he complexity of these games.

On one side, you have something to love: the domination of Jesse Owens, one of the greatest track and field athletes of all time, scoring gold after gold after gold (after gold) decades before his country would start even pretending to care about racial equality.

On the other side, you have something to, if not hate, make you extremely uncomfortable: Not only is Hitler still in power, he's presiding over the dang games! Also, the Olympic torch relay was started by them! Unclear exactly whose idea it was, but it was at least approved by Hitler and Goebbels and orchestrated by someone who was cool with working with them.

So to say the literal least, there's a lot going on here.

Anyway, back to Jesse Owens. I could write for days about how many times my eyes popped out of my dang head while reading about him.

Between his life before the games--the ethical quandary of deciding whether to even compete in the Olympics presided over by the at-the-time-already-known-to-be-shady-n-shitty-as-fuck Nazi party--and after the games--difficulties of turning world-class athletic prowess into a sustainable lifelong career--there's too much to put in one Sternal Journal (especially for a Stern who doesn't typically Journ about sports).

So let's just talk about those four gold medals.

100 m (Day 2)

Only because of what's to come, the least remarkable part of this performance is that Owens opened it by winning the 100 m and tying the world record. Other American Ralph Metcalfe nearly pulls up on him, but doesn't have it, and they both definitively smoke the German competitor who takes bronze.

Which is very, very nice because Hitler obviously wanted said German to win. Ooooh, and Hitler was angry. Hitler was so angry that, despite tradition that whatever schmuck world leader is presiding over the games should congratulate the winner, he refused, not wanting to shake hands with a black man.

I'm not sure why this struck me as so fucked up. Hitler clearly went on to commit monumentally more hateful and bigoted acts than refusing someone a handshake. But there's something about the tininess and pettiness of it that adds another layer to mountain of shitbag that Adolf Hitler was.

Anyway, on top of it being ethically disgusting, it was also a biiiig tactical mistake. Ya fucked up, Hitler! Because everyone liked Jesse Owens! And not just Americans...

Long Jump (Day 3)

The day after na-na-na-boo-boo-ing Hitler's white supremacist ideals on the track, Owens had to do it in the field. There was a great big rivalry set up between him and German Luz Long, European broad jump champion!

With even a passing understanding of sports through pop culture, I (Julian) at this point (thinking this whole thing is very spectacular and immense, but also that I definitely know where it's going) know that Long is gonna be the bad guy. I had seen The Big Green. I knew all about the horrors of the holocaust. This tall, blond guy from an opposing team which happened to be The Third Reich was gonna be bad news.

Only he wasn't. Owens had an uncharacteristically bad start that day. During the qualifying round, he kept jumping just past the mark, disqualifying his scores. With just once chance left, Long suggested that Owens undershoot by a foot, just making sure that he qualified for the finals.

It worked and they went on to duel it out in the finals, beating the previous Olympic record five times in the process. Owens obviously won, but the cherry on top was the immediate friendship with Long, who was the first to congratulate him and walked around the stadium with him arm in arm.

Again, we're just blowing past wild details and moments of humanity and super-humanity, but the story keeps astounding. Luz Long went on to die just a few years later in World War Two, killed in action as a member of the Nazi army.

In a letter that he wrote to Owens while stationed in Africa, Long said that he thought it might be the last letter he ever wrote, and asked that once the war was over, Owens could go to Germany and tell Long's son Karl, just a baby at the time, what kind of man his father was:

Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when we not separated by war. I am saying—tell him how things can be between men on this earth.


WHAT! EXCUSE ME! SPORTS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME? WHY AM I CRYING?

I'm crying because Jesse Owns fulfilled Long's request, not only befriending the younger Karl, but serving as best man in his wedding.

Wow! Okay, back to 1936.

200 m (Day 4)

Again, this was just a casual smashing out of the park win, as Owens tied the olympic record in the qualifying round and smashed it in the finals.

But here are two more astounding facts about this race:

1. The silver medalist was an American named Mack Robinson who (a) also broke the previous Olympic record and (b) was the older brother of Jackie Robinson!!!

2. This was supposed to be Owen's last race.

Out of all the things I didn't know about this story, I definitely didn't know that one!

Which brings us to the story of...

4x100 m (Day 9)

Until the morning of August 9th, the lineup of the US team was Marty Glickman, Sam Stoller, Foy Draper, and Frank Wykoff.

That morning, the entire sprint team was called to a meeting and notified that Glickman and Stoller would be replaced by Owens and Metcalfe, both thought to be done for the games, despite the fact that the original US team was heavily favored to win. The reason given was that the Germans were rumored to be hiding their best sprinters to enact an upset.

Only here's the thing: Glickman and Stoller were the only two Jewish members of the US Olympic sprint team, and rumors at the time (which still persist) are that they were removed under pressure from the German hosts.

To his credit, Owens immediately protested, saying that he'd won his medals and Owens and Metcalfe deserved a chance to win theirs. But the US leadership wouldn't back down.

So Jesse Owens raced one more time, once again tying and then setting a world record.

Alright, that's a lot.

But to recap: four gold medals, multiple olympic and world records tied and beaten, a snub from Hitler, not giving a shit about said snub, the adoration of the world (and maybe more importantly) the German fans present, tactical help and earnest congratulations from a rival-turned-friend who would go on to die fighting for Germany in World War 2, a heartfelt prescient letter from that rival just before his death, the fulfilling of the promise of that letter by telling the son of the rival who would never know his father about how great humanity can be, OH! I didn't even mention, during the 200, all the Germans were chanting YEH-SEH OH-WENS (you can hear it in the footage), andthenandthenandthen casually beating Jackie Robinson's older brother, and finally only begrudgingly winning a fourth gold (and fourth world record) after trying to stand up for his teammates who very well could have been cut from the team for being Jewish.

Fine! I get it! Sports can be very interesting. Perhaps even more than notable. However, just as he did 85 years ago, Jesse Owens has set an incredibly high bar that may not be touched for quite a while as I work my way through this list. The next entry (whenever I'm up for it) will be the Seabiscuit War Admiral Match Race of 1938.

The next Sternal Journal will, of course, be sometime next week.

Until then, love you all. Stay safe, stay sane.

Julian

P.S. Links and recs

Jesse Owens Reference Links:
A 15 min video that covers most of what I talked about here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1inifMJ0xio
The full letter Luz Long wrote to Jesse Owens: https://lettersofnote.com/2016/08/15/tell-him-about-his-father/
Thrilling edit of the Long Jump duel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR6VFvMXCN4
Interview with ousted sprinter (and apparently prolific announcer) Marty Glickman about the 4x100 that wasn't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14HeJUQb6xQ&t=265s

Some things I'm enjoying right now:
Podcast: Dead Eyes. A comedian explores the gentle mystery of why he was fired by Tom Hanks from a bit part on Band of Brothers.
Books: Still cranking through Bleak House and This is How You Lose the Time War
Albums: Fiona Apple's Fetch the Boltcutters, Eric B and Rakim's Paid in Full, CCR's Bayou Country, and Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief.
TV: Devs and Feel Good
Movies: Ma Vie de Courgette and Pain and Glory (s/o Cutie Movie Club)