He moved into the mechanical lope and it was so beautiful to watch that Glickman forgot his bitterness and gloried in being a witness to it. The lope was so fluid and so light, Glickman thought, Owens’s spikes hardly seemed to bite the track surface. Owens led by 4 metres when he handed – slightly hesitantly – the baton to Metcalfe; and Metcalfe stormed away, 7 metres up when he handed over to Draper. Metcalfe almost went out of the change-over zone and in that instant Glickman might have been vindicated: the only people who can beat us are ourselves.
Draper, alone, maintained the lead and that gave Wykoff a solitary run for home. The Americans did 39.8 seconds, the Olympic and world records beaten. Italy came second (41.1) and Germany third (41.2).
Owens had his fourth gold medal.
Australian swimmer Evelyn de Lacy reflected what Glickman and so many others felt when, half a century later, she said that her Berlin memory was ‘of watching Jesse Owens. I never missed any of his races, he ran with such beauty and grace, he was so beautiful to watch.’43
Hitler did not leave the stadium.
In the changing rooms immediately after the race, however, Secretary-Treasurer of the AAU Daniel Ferris reminded Owens he was expected to run in a meeting at Cologne on the Tuesday. Money could be made from the organisers of such meetings (the Cologne people said the AAU could have 15 per cent of the gate if Owens competed, only 10 per cent if he did not),44 although by definition as amateurs Owens and the other athletes would not see a penny of it. Coach Draper reacted strongly. Owens had given everything over the week and you couldn’t ask a man to run the day after this relay, but because Cologne lay two days away Draper’s case fell.
As it would seem, no thought had been given to whether Owens would want to go to Cologne, never mind the further meetings being arranged. He felt deeply tired, homesick and, preying on his mind, an orchestra in California had just telegrammed offering $25,000 – a fortune – for a two-week appearance with them. He didn’t know it was a hoax and understandably wanted to take it up.
In the women’s 4 × 100 the Germans were favourites because they had broken the world record on the way to the final. Bullano in the Italian team remembered how cold the weather was and how, while she lay in the tunnel at the stadium waiting, Owens ‘covered my legs with a blanket’.45
The race turned on the final change-over and by then the Germans had a substantial lead. Ilse Dörffeldt stood poised to run the anchor leg against Helen Stephens.
‘It was,’ Werner Schwieger says, ‘the most fantastic event. I was sitting at the beginning of the section where the last baton pass would be – our women were about 8 metres ahead …’.
Marie Dollinger sprinted up to Dörffeldt but seemed to be coming too fast – and Dörffeldt did not seem to set off fast enough. Suddenly they were side by side, not one behind the other, and in the fumble the baton went down. Dörffeldt raised her arms in a gesture of complete despair then clutched her head.
Hitler, on his feet, sat down and thumped his gloves on his knee twice. Goebbels, next to him, said something. Hitler turned and said something to someone behind him.
Stephens strode home and America had a new Olympic record.
Audrey Brown, running the third leg for Great Britain, found the German team ‘superbly drilled’ and their dropping of the baton ‘unbelievable’. She had often wonder if they would have won because Stephens ‘was such an unknown quantity, running faster and faster each time she went out. Fortunately we managed to keep our heads and came in a creditable second.’ Canada finished third.
The German women, crying, moved into a communal huddle.
Hitler summoned them and comforted them, saying that they shouldn’t be so upset because they had proved they were the best in the world. Der Angriff supposed Hitler’s comfort ‘must have eased their sorrow and pain’.46
Brown said ‘standing on the rostrum with the Canadians and Americans and looking round the vast stadium … was the most important moment in the Games for me, despite wearing rather ridiculous oakleaf laurels’ (given to silver medallists).47
[Meanwhile] the press sought to demonstrate Germany’s dominance by tallying up medals and points from the Games. Medal accumulation charts and graphs, which showed Germany’s athletic supremacy over other nations, appeared in numerous publications. The press employed a confusing point system to add up top placements in the various Olympic events, as well. Foreign journalists questioned the fairness of this method, charging the Germans with manipulating statistics. Discrepancies certainly did appear. A post-Olympic book, for instance, calculated that Germany’s women earned forty points in track and field while Deutsche Sport Illustrierte came up with fifty-eight. Instead of assigning points to the top three finishers, the magazine awarded Germany’s 4 × 100-metre team the maximum points, on the basis of their world record time in the preliminaries, not their performance in the finals, in which they were disqualified.48
There remained the men’s 4 × 400, Great Britain against America. On the first leg Britain’s Frederick Wolff was slow and that loaded the pressure onto Godfrey Rampling.49 Phil Edwards (Canada), a long-striding chunk of muscle, led, Robert Young (America) thrusting up to his shoulder and then on the bend, through the shadows of late afternoon, Rampling swept imperiously past both of them and strode away. He handed the baton to William Roberts, a short man moving urgently, while New Yorker Edward O’Brien – bigger, burlier – tracked him, counter-attacked, tried to go outside. For an instant they were abreast but now Roberts counter-attacked. The British anchor, Arthur Brown, did not squander his inheritance and as he crossed the line raised his arms in triumph.
Clutching the Californian telegram Owens took the bus back to the Village. He would do the exhibition tour, beginning at Cologne. The train left on the morrow, giving plenty of time to pack and say goodbye to people he’d met, particularly Luz. Instead Metcalfe ‘rushed up’ to him and said the train was leaving now: no time to pack except his running gear. Owens managed to leave a note for Albritton asking him to bring everything he’d left.50 The Cologne meeting wasn’t on the Tuesday but tomorrow.
As souvenirs the sprinters had been given special starting trowels, each in a leather case with XI Olympiade Berlin 1936 inscribed on them. The sprinters liked them a lot and other competitors felt they were entitled to souvenirs, too. As a consequence the officials controlling the return of other equipment ‘had difficulty in preventing the competitors from carrying off javelins, discuses, relay batons, etc.’.51
When the athletics finished in the stadium the gymnasts came on to do their exhibition, filling the time before the marathon runners came back. The gymnasts had been practising for two or three weeks. Werner Schwieger says that ‘we had to go to the August-Bier-Platz [see map on page xiii] several times. Around the Olympic stadium there were lots of little sports grounds and fields, among them the August-Bier-Platz. There we practised all our presentations. They would check on the gymnastic kits. The white gym trousers were not supposed to be too long. We had to practise a lot, not only for the free exercises but also for the apparatus gymnastics on the horizontal and parallel bars, the horses, the trampoline and so on.’
The gymnasts entered through the tunnel for what was called 1,000 German Gymnasts although it included the Swedes whose participation had provoked so much domestic controversy. ‘We marched in in rows of three. There were little button-like markers in the ground and the one who was in the middle of the row of three had to step on these markers so it looked all a regular pattern. I was the one in the middle. We had practised this on August-Bier-Platz over and over again. And besides the free exercises, there were also presentations of apparatus gymnastics. Horizontal and parallel bars and other apparatus were put up in the middle of the field and we did the exercises.’ When the presentation ended Schwieger and the others watched the climax of the marathon.52
In the background Sohn looked perfectly composed as he came back through the lanes of shadow into the stadium and sprinted for the
line, reaching it at 2 hours 29 minutes 19 seconds. He moved away from people trying to help him, face expressionless, and sat, taking his shoes off. Huddled under a blanket he looked slightly lost, as if he didn’t know how to handle winning the gold medal for the country oppressing his own; then he trotted off to the showers. He didn’t see Harper come in second after holding off a strong challenge from Nam in the tunnel.53 Sohn said, ‘much credit for my victory must go to Mr. Harper of England. He kept telling me not to worry about Zabala but to let him run himself out so we paid no attention to him or any other runners and set our own pace.’54 Reportedly Harper couldn’t find the Great Britain team’s changing rooms and no British official sought him out to tell him where they were. Barefoot and limping, he wandered the concrete corridors beneath the stadium vainly asking policemen but they couldn’t understand him. He limped on, smoking a cigarette.
At the medal ceremony Sohn and Nam stood with their heads bowed.
Back at the Village Sohn lay on his bed, a blanket covering him, while a succession of tearful Japanese paid homage to him, some even laying their heads on his chest. One said, ‘we have been preparing for this victory for 24 years’.55
The next day the Seoul daily newspaper Dong a Ilbo reported the marathon as a ‘Korean victory in Berlin’. It carried a photograph of Sohn on the podium but the little Japanese flag had been removed from his tracksuit. Ten members of the newspaper staff were arrested and publication suspended for nine months. Sohn never ran again.56
In the swimming pool Mastenbroek beat Arendt in the first 100 metres freestyle semi-final, and Campbell won the other from another Dutch girl, ‘Willy’ den Ouden.
Owens had gone, Mastenbroek still very much here.
And that was the eighth day.
Notes
1. Christine Duerksen Sant, ‘“Genuine German Girls”: The Nazi Portrayal of its Sportswomen of the 1936 Berlin Olympics’, p. 99. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Winston-Salem, Wake Forest University, 2000.
2. Stephanie Daniels and Anita Tedder, ‘A Proper Spectacle’ – Women Olympians 1900–1936 (Houghton Conquest, ZeNaNa Press, 2000), p. 105.
3. New York Times, 5 August 1936.
4. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Beyond Belief (New York, The Free Press, 1986).
5. William J. Baker, Jesse Owens, An American Life (New York, The Free Press, 1986), p. 100.
6. Neil Duncanson, The Fastest Men on Earth (London, Willow Books, 1988).
7. Lewis H. Carlson and John J. Fogarty, Tales of Gold (Chicago, IL, Contemporary Books, 1987), p. 181.
8. Ibid., p. 174.
9. Daniels and Tedder, ‘A Proper Spectacle’, p. 102.
10. Ibid., pp. 102–3.
11. Velma Dunn; interview with author.
12. Carlson and Fogarty, Tales of Gold, p. 188.
13. iwitnesstohistory.org/ResidentPages/Wenzel/Wenzel%2036% 20olympics.htm (visited 10 October 2005).
14. www.answers.com/topic/trebisonda-valla marathon (visited 1 October 2005).
15. Carlson and Fogarty, Tales of Gold, p. 151.
16. www.athletics.org.nz/lovelock2.html (visited 23 November 2005).
17. New York Times, 5 August 1936.
18. It seems that Riefenstahl staged a recreation of this for her film on the Games. Viewing it today, it certainly looks and feels like a reconstruction. No doubt the darkness hampered her filming of the original event.
19. Carlson and Fogarty, Tales of Gold, p. 148.
20. Marty Glickman with Stan Isaacs, Fastest Kid on the Block (Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 1996).
21. Harold Abrahams, British sprinter who won the 100 metres gold at Paris in 1924 (and became one of the subjects of the film Chariots of Fire). Ironically, in the context of the Berlin Games, he was Jewish.
22. www.library.otago.ac.nz/exhibitions/rhodes_scholars/jack_lovelock.html (visited 1 October 2005).
23. www.library.otago.ac.nz/exhibitions/rhodes_scholars/jack_lovelock.html (visited 1 October 2005).
24. Associated Press quoted in the New York Times, 6 August 1936.
25. Baker, Jesse Owens, p. 103.
26. Carlson and Fogarty, Tales of Gold, p. 153.
27. www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/trojan_family/summer03/F_Zamperini.html (visited 29 September 2005).
28. Carlson and Fogarty, Tales of Gold, p. 150.
29. Ibid., p. 146.
30. Werner Schwieger; interview with Birgit Kubisch.
31. Glickman with Isaacs, Fastest Kid on the Block.
32. Baker, Jesse Owens, p. 104.
33. Ibid., p. 102.
34. Ibid., p. 105.
35. Daniels and Tedder, ‘A Proper Spectacle’, p. 101.
36. www.sport.nl/boek.php3?artid=2691 (visited 20 August 2005).
37. Anthony Read and David Fisher, Berlin: The Biography of a City (London, Hutchinson, 1994), p. 214.
38. The Times, London, 11 August 1936.
39. New York Times, 9 August 1936.
40. www.olympic.org/uk/athletes/heroes/bio_uk.asp?PAR_I_ID=88103 (visited 15 August 2005).
41. marathoninfo.free.fr/jo/berlin1936.htm (visited 2 October 2005).
42. Daniels and Tedder, ‘A Proper Spectacle’, p. 120.
43. Ibid., p. 111.
44. Baker, Jesse Owens, p. 110.
45. Daniels and Tedder, ‘A Proper Spectacle’, p. 112.
46. Such coverage lent itself nicely to critics of women’s sports who claimed that women were emotionally ill-suited for serious competition. Most assuredly, the press and Nazi leadership would have refrained from drawing such attention to any male athletes who similarly let their emotions show. members.fortunecity.com/dikigoros/inter sexism.htm (visited 18 April 2005).
47. Daniels and Tedder, ‘A Proper Spectacle’, p. 117.
48. Sant, ‘“Genuine German Girls”’, p. 89.
49. Father of Charlotte Rampling, the film actress.
50. Baker, Jesse Owens, p. 111.
51. The XIth Olympic Games, Berlin, 1936 Official Report.
52. Werner Schwieger; interview with Birgit Kubisch.
53. marathoninfo.free.fr/jo/berlin1936.htm (visited 2 October 2005).
54. New York Times, 9 August 1936.
55. Ibid.
56. marathoninfo.free.fr/jo/berlin1936.htm (visited 2 October 2005).
Chapter 9
LAST SHOT FIRED
I came all the way from California to do this.
The woman who kissed Hitler
The fine weather held as the Games moved into their second week. With the track and field events over, this second week would be a different mosaic of movement from the first, the competitions more varied and spread out; and always the raw politics of the mid-1930s crept, like a dark, distant shadow, closer and closer. This time the shadow came from Spain.
The American athletes left Berlin for a sequence of meetings whatever their feelings or exhaustion: on the Monday, one party to Dresden, another to Cologne; both parties in Prague on the Tuesday, some to a town called Bochum on the Wednesday and after that to London; on the Thursday another party from Hamburg to London for a Saturday competition. The prospect of their arrival excited anticipation, they filled stadiums and they filled column inches. The Berlin Olympics made them and Germany proved reluctant to let them go.
Hendrika Mastenbroek faced a week of incessant stress in the pool and she emerged from it with such stature that, fifty years later, someone said at a reunion for the Games Owens had been King and she Queen, but because the main weight of column inches was devoted to track and field events a lot of people scarcely noticed. Her week:
Monday
100 metres freestyle final
Tuesday
100 metres backstroke heats
Wednesday
4 × 100 relay heats
100 metres backstroke semi-finals
Thursday
400 metr
es freestyle heats
100 metres backstroke final
Friday
400 metres freestyle semi-finals
4 × 100 relay final
Saturday
400 metres freestyle final
There were many pieces to the mosaic, including administrative. The International Amateur Athletic Federation met in Berlin and ratified the twenty-seven new records. It also took over running women’s athletics from the International Womens’ Sports Federation and in doing that stepped into delicate territory. The IAAF passed a resolution dealing with the ‘man–woman’ controversy although they couched it in careful language: ‘Questions of a physical nature’. The Swedish secretary, Bo Ekelund, explained what it really meant. The resolution said that in the event of a protest the organisers of any meeting had to ‘arrange for a physical inspection made by a medical expert’. The competitor had to undergo this test and accept its findings.
It would not be good news for Dora Ratjen although, as we shall see, she wasn’t ‘outed’ by that but by her five o’clock shadow which made a couple of fellow passengers on her train curious …
Most competitors were quite normal and behaved quite normally. Pat Norton remembered: ‘We were often escorted to open air restaurants by four good looking, heel clicking, Nazi officers for supper. The men were studiously polite and we got the impression they were there in the line of duty! The American girls didn’t sit at home with nothing to do either. A bus would arrive after dinner with some of the American male athletes and they would all pile in and off they’d go – even one lass with her leg in plaster wasn’t going to be left behind and was gratefully carried to the bus! One night we were joined by some German girls for singing. We Australians sang in a traditional way, light and pleasant, the Japanese with sweet nasally tinklings, and the Germans finished the night with robust marching songs.’1
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