Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics

by Jeremy Schaap

  Among the non-Germans moved by the sight of Owens’s crowning triumph was Thomas Wolfe. Seated in the box of William E. Dodd, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Wolfe howled in delight, so loudly that the ambassador’s daughter, Martha (later allegedly a Soviet spy), said that Hitler heard him and turned around in anger. “Owens was black as tar,” Wolfe wrote, “but what the hell, it was our team, and I thought he was wonderful. I was proud of him, so I yelled.”

  Owens had done it—three events, three gold medals. He had achieved all that he had set out to achieve. Before Snyder rushed to congratulate his magnificent charge, he bowed his head and clenched his fist. His mission too was accomplished. Owens had won three individual events at a single games. The writers had already nearly exhausted their arsenal of verbal laurels—but more were located. Alan Gould got it right: “Incomparable,” he wrote. “Matchless.”

  Still, Owens all but apologized for not breaking the world record in the 200 meters. “I told you that I was going all the way out,” he said to Rice. He was bundled up in a jacket now, steam rising from his sweaty head. “I only wish there had been good weather and a faster track—but I got no kick.”

  A few minutes later, after stretching and drying off, he unburdened himself to several reporters. He was asked again about Hitler, who had left just before the flag and anthem ceremony. “Immaterial,” Owens said. While he said he was not bothered by the Führer’s show of disrespect, he was saddened to think that his Olympics were over. There was, after all, so much he felt he still had to offer.

  “I’m just getting the feel of the track,” he said. “I never was in better condition and would like to keep on competing. I told Coach Robertson I’d gladly run in the relay if he wanted me. I hope there’s a chance that they will keep me busy the rest of the week. I’m having a wonderful time.”

  19

  The Relay

  * * *

  BERLIN: AUGUST 6–9, 1936

  FROM THE TIME of the trials through his victory at 200 meters, it had been universally assumed that Jesse Owens would rest after the fourth day of the games and yield the Olympic spotlight to his less gifted teammates—and non-American runners. “Jesse Owens’s Olympics ended yesterday,” Joe Williams wrote in his column for the August 6 New York World-Telegram. “Today the Olympics take on the international form for which they were originally designed. Which is to say some of the athletes in other countries will get a chance to break into the headlines. Up to now it has been all Owens. The Ohio Negro has been the whole show.” Responding to Owens’s request to compete in the relay, Lawson Robertson said, “Owens has had enough glory and collected enough gold medals and oak trees to last him a while. We want to give the other boys a chance to enjoy the ‘ceremonie protocalaire’ [the victory ceremony]. Marty Glickman, Sam Stoller, and Frank Wykoff are assured places on the relay team. The fourth choice rests between Foy Draper and Ralph Metcalfe.”

  With that, Robertson seemed to lay the issue to rest. Jesse Owens would return home with three gold medals, not four. That was one point on which it seemed everyone agreed—everyone except Owens himself.

  In fact, while in Berlin, Owens had expressed his desire to run on the relay team several times. On August 4, for instance, Alan Gould wrote, “Jesse, who hates to stand around, had hoped to run one leg of the 400-meter sprint relay, but Lawson Robertson, track coach, feels the Ohio State Negro has done just about enough in one Olympics.”

  It appeared that Owens’s entreaties had made no impact. Operating under the assumption that the Olympics were over for the Dark Streak from Ohio State—John Kieran’s favorite nickname for Owens—Kieran wrote in the New York Times, “Taking the 200-meter run at Berlin yesterday, Jesse Owens made it game and set.” He compared Owens, at length, to Alvin Kraenzlein, the American who had won four gold medals at the Paris games in 1900, but he never suggested that Owens might have a chance to equal Kraenzlein. “If they had wanted to make a real contest of his events they should have made Jesse run with a suitcase in each hand,” Kieran wrote.

  Kieran’s column appeared on August 6. But on the evening of Friday, August 7, Alan Gould broke the story that Owens had been named to the relay team. Robertson “decided definitely tonight to call on Jesse Owens,” he wrote. Robertson told Gould that he had changed his mind because he had received information that “the Germans quietly have built up a quartet which had been clocked in sensational time.” Robertson also reportedly perceived that the Dutch might be a threat.

  “That’s swell news,” Owens said when Robertson told him and Snyder of the shift. “I’ll sure hustle around that corner.” Snyder explained to the press that Robertson had made his decision in part because Owens had proved in the 200 meters how well he could run around a turn—as if that had ever been in doubt.

  When Robertson told Owens and Snyder of the decision, they were appreciative, but they also felt guilty—guilty that their campaigning would cost another American a gold medal. That guilt was diminished somewhat by the reports that the Germans had a formidable foursome. Of course Owens and Snyder did not want to see the Germans win and Hitler rejoice, especially not after what Der Angriff had been printing. Still . . . if Metcalfe did not make the team, it would mean that he would never win an Olympic gold medal; for Draper, Stoller, and Glickman, getting kicked off the relay would mean that, at best, they would have to wait another four years for gold; and for Wykoff, it would mean that he would return to the States with only a fourth place in the 100 meters. At least Wykoff had won gold medals on both the 1928 and the 1932 relay teams.

  The final assignments had not been announced, but Snyder said he assumed Owens would lead off, followed by Metcalfe, Stoller, and, on the anchor leg, Wykoff. Thus it seemed that the odd men out would be Glickman and Draper, who had lagged behind Stoller in practice sprints at the athletes’ village. Gould wrote that if Glickman and Draper did not receive “their expected assignments,” there would be a “critical reaction among those Americans feeling that as many of the boys as possible should get to compete.”

  Two days earlier, Lawson Robertson had said he wanted to see as many of the so-called boys compete as possible, echoing the plan as it had been conceived back on Randall’s Island. Now, like a skilled debater, he deftly took the other side. “I’d like to let everybody run, but we’re here to win as many events as possible,” he said. “They are likely to criticize any decision I may make, but my job’s to put the best possible teams in the race.” Clearly, that was not how he had previously perceived his job, or Jesse Owens—the best sprinter anyone had ever seen—would always have been on the relay team. Nor had Robertson perceived his job that way four years earlier, when Eddie Tolan and Ralph Metcalfe, his two best sprinters, both sat out the relay as four other sprinters—all white—easily won the gold.

  Robertson’s other stated reason for inserting Owens into his relay lineup—fear of clandestinely brilliant German and Dutch sprinters—was demonstrably absurd. Nothing the Dutch or Germans had achieved in Berlin or in the months leading up to the games suggested that they were capable of pulling off an upset. No German sprinter had won a medal in Berlin, or even placed fourth. Only Erich Borchmeyer was world-class, and that was debatable. And the Dutchman Martin Osendarp’s two bronze medals hardly constituted a legitimate threat to American sprinting hegemony.

  It was true too that for the 4 × 400-meter relay, which would be run the day after the 4 × 100-meter relay, Robertson did not select his four best runners; instead, he left his two best runners off that relay team. On August 7, Archie Williams won the gold medal in the 400 meters and Jimmy LuValle won the bronze medal. Arthur Godfrey Brown of Great Britain and his compatriot William Roberts finished second and fourth, respectively. Yet despite the strength of the British team—which would include both Brown and Roberts—Robertson selected for the relay team neither Williams nor LuValle, two of the eight black men on the U.S. track-and-field team. On August 9, he would pay the price for that decision. The United States lost to Gre
at Britain by two full seconds.

  So why did Robertson really change his mind? There are any number of more plausible reasons than the ones he offered. He might have felt pressure from Avery Brundage. He might have been swayed by Dean Cromwell. He might have had an honest reconsideration. But what happened on the morning of August 8, when he and Cromwell together announced to his sprinters who was in and who was out, suggests that the suspicions formed seventy years ago contain more than a morsel of truth.

  That morning the seven American sprinters gathered together at the athletes’ village. With Cromwell at his side, Robertson would make the announcement. By that time, everyone assumed that Owens, Metcalfe, and Wykoff were in. The question was which of the three remaining 100-meter men were out. (Mack Robinson was never considered a real possibility to run.) Glickman and Draper assumed they were but were unsure. Stoller had been told by Cromwell that he was in, but he did not entirely trust him.

  “Boys, this is a tough decision,” Robertson said, kneading his hands together as if he were pained to have to make a choice. “You’ve all done so well here, and I hate to disappoint any of you. But Coach Cromwell and I have decided to go with Jesse, Ralph, Foy, and Frank. Marty, Sam, I’m sorry, but that’s our decision. We were hoping to give you both a chance, but we can’t afford to take the Germans lightly. We have reason to believe that they’ve been hiding their best runners, waiting to upset us.”

  For much of the rest of his life—but not until several years later—Marty Glickman claimed that Owens stood up and said, “I’ve got my medals, coach. Let Marty and Sam run.” At which point Cromwell supposedly replied, “You’ll do as you’re told,” and Owens sat back down. But Owens, for his part, later reported that he stood up and said, “I’ve already got three gold medals, I don’t need any more. I’d like to relinquish my place to Sam Stoller.” In his account, Owens did not mention Glickman, which makes sense, because it seems unlikely that he would have suggested that Metcalfe should also relinquish his spot.

  In any case, when Robertson’s words hit Stoller, they hit hard. It was his twenty-first birthday. It was unlikely that he would still be sprinting when he was twenty-five.

  Stoller was speechless, but Glickman stood up and spoke. Almost trembling with indignation, he said, “Coach, this is ridiculous. You don’t hide world-class sprinters. They have to get race experience. Any American relay team you pick will win by fifteen yards—any of our runners, the milers or the hurdlers, could run against the Germans or anyone else and win by fifteen yards.” He paused. “If you drop us,” he continued, “there’s going to be a helluva furor—we’re the only two Jews on the track team.”

  “I’ll worry about that,” Robertson said.

  Finally Stoller spoke. “Coach,” he said, addressing Robertson, not Cromwell, “why did we go through all those races if they weren’t going to mean anything? With all due respect, Foy finished last—Marty and I beat him.”

  “Sam,” Robertson said, “Foy has more experience.” Then, firmly, “That’s our decision.”

  It is possible that Owens did stand up and protest—but barely. He had spent much of the previous week lobbying to run—not just privately, but in the press, all but demanding a chance to win a fourth gold medal, which, incidentally, was his right. He was, after all, the best runner in the world and the hero of the Olympics.

  As Ralph Metcalfe recalled many years later, “Jesse is one of my best friends. I’m glad he won [his] medals, but he already had three when the relay meeting was held. But he didn’t say a word that I recall. I guess he wanted number four that bad.”

  (On the topic of the infamous meeting, Jesse Abramson wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, “In justice to [Owens] it must be said that he was willing to step aside for Stoller.” Again, no mention of Glickman. Of course, Abramson was not an eyewitness.)

  Frank Wykoff’s account of what happened is consistent with Metcalfe’s—and at odds with Glickman’s and Owens’s. “Originally, it was definitely supposed to be Marty Glickman, Sam Stoller, Ralph Metcalfe, and myself,” he later said. “Then the night before the race they announced that Jesse Owens insisted on going for four gold medals. Then I heard that Metcalfe was not going to run, that Sam Stoller would. I felt very bad. The four of us—Glickman, Stoller, Metcalfe, and I—had been working well together. We could have set the record.” Like Glickman, however, Wykoff was convinced—and remained convinced—that Glickman and Stoller were the victims of anti-Semitism.

  Glickman blamed not only Cromwell and Robertson but Avery Brundage as well. He theorized that the coaches and Brundage were anti-Semites and dropped him and Stoller so as not to embarrass their German hosts by sending two Jews to the top of the medal stand. Stoller, meanwhile, always said that he did not think anti-Semitism was the deciding factor. He said Cromwell was merely protecting his Trojans, Wykoff and Draper.

  The protestations of Glickman and Stoller failed to move their coaches, and that afternoon at 3 P.M. Owens was on his mark in the Americans’ heat. He ran a remarkable leadoff leg, handing off the baton to Metcalfe with a 20-foot lead. Thirty seconds later, Wykoff broke the tape, and the quartet of Owens, Metcalfe, Draper, and Wykoff had won its heat in 40.0 seconds, tying the world record. A few minutes later the Germans won their heat, in 41.4 seconds, and then the Dutch won their heat, in 41.3 seconds—but none of the German or Dutch sprinters were unknowns or had been hidden; they were decidedly the usual suspects and, as usual, slower than the Americans. “The heralded Dutch and German opposition, which Head Coach Lawson Robertson said prompted him to use Owens and Draper, failed to materialize,” the Associated Press reported.

  Climbing into the stands after the heat to watch three Americans fight it out for the decathlon championship, Owens donned a pair of sunglasses, although the sky was overcast. For the first week of the games he had enjoyed the mobs that adored him and sought him out. Now he was tired. He had run nine races and made nine jumps in eight days—and his right arm had cramped from signing his looping signature so often for so many admirers, most of them German. Larry Snyder told reporters that he feared “the nervous tension” might spread the cramp to Owens’s legs. That afternoon in the stands of the Olympic stadium, Owens was hoping not to be recognized. But of course he was not hard to spot. Awestruck German fans asked him in broken English to pose with them and of course to sign autographs. He obliged, but celebrity fatigue had set in. As he tried to be good-natured, he thought about the one race that had not yet been run. He knew it would be a walkover, a certain fourth gold medal. He asked himself if he had been selfish to demand a place on the relay team. Really, he thought, what’s the difference between three and four gold medals? But now it was too late. The same four men who ran in the heat were required to run in the final. He reminded himself again that he was the best in the world and it was his right to ask to run. No one could reasonably say that the United States would have a better chance of winning without him on the relay. Still, he felt guilty.

  Snyder tried to assuage that guilt. “You’ve got no reason to feel bad about this,” he said, searching for Owens’s eyes behind the dark lenses. “If you were white, Robertson and Cromwell would never have considered not putting you on the relay. Remember, when Stoller and Glickman get home, they’ll have plenty of opportunities. Glickman’s only eighteen. Jesse, these are your games, you’re a competitor. You deserve that gold medal tomorrow.”

  “I know, coach,” Owens said, his head down. “I just feel bad for Sam and Marty.”

  Sam Stoller had been too depressed to leave the athletes’ village after the morning meeting, but Marty Glickman, wearing a USA sweatshirt, spent much of the afternoon in the press box, in the company of the American writers. After watching the Germans and the Dutch prove that there had been nothing for Robertson and Cromwell to fear, he said, “The heats failed to show the necessity for shaking up the lineup after Stoller and myself long practiced the stick work. It looks like politics to us.”

  “How’s that?
” Arthur Daley asked.

  “Cromwell’s influence, looking out for his Trojans,” Glickman said, avoiding, for the time being, any mention of anti-Semitism. “Any American combination might have run forty seconds flat this afternoon, since there was no pressure involved. I am willing to admit the team picked, at its fastest, probably can break forty for a new record, but this talk about the Germans and the Dutch being so tough looks like a false alarm.”

  Daley, Gallico, Gould, and the rest of the writers watched from the press box as Glenn Morris overcame his fellow Americans Bob Clark and Jack Parker to win the decathlon. At dusk, Morris concluded an exhausting two days of competition by sprinting the final few hundred meters in the final event, the 1500 meters, breaking his own decathlon world record by twenty-five points. In the fading twilight, the three Americans mounted the medalists’ podium and stood at attention as “The Star-Spangled Banner” played yet again.

  When Morris, a twenty-four-year-old automobile salesman from Fort Collins, Colorado, left the podium, he walked straight up to the smartly dressed older woman he had been eyeing for a week.

  “I held out my hand and congratulated him,” Leni Riefenstahl later wrote, “but he grabbed me in his arms, tore off my blouse, and kissed my breasts, right in the middle of the stadium, in front of a hundred thousand spectators. A lunatic, I thought.”