Berlin Games (34 page)

 

One female athlete to whom Hitler would have been far less hospitable was the half-Jewish Helene Mayer, who was the subject of much attention from the spectators. Mayer looked the typical Aryan female pin-up, with her long blonde hair plaited and tied over her head. She had made it through the elimination matches with ease, and at 5 p.m. on 5 August, she was standing along with her seven other finalists in the Cupola Hall in the House of German Sport. Her two main rivals for the gold were Ellen Preis from Austria, who the reigning Olympic champion, and the Hungarian Ilona Schacherer-Elek. Coincidentally, like Mayer, both women were half Jewish, but had been brought up as Catholics and did not consider themselves to be Jews.

The finals were a league and not a knockout, so the contest would be decided by points, and not by any one match. In her first encounter with Elek, Mayer fought aggressively, intimidating her opponent with
her lunge. A less stylish fencer than Mayer, Elek was nevertheless a superb strategist and was supremely quick. Although the crowd willed Mayer to win, Elek's speed counted, and the Hungarian won all three bouts. Mayer was not as devastated as the spectators. She had been in this situation before and had come back. Elek might well have a bad match with another finalist, which would even the scores. Mayer won her next six matches, which gave her a huge boost of confidence when she came to face Ellen Preis in her final match.

What happened next is regarded as one of the classic fencing matches in Olympic history. With the points being incredibly close between Elek, Mayer and Preis, the winner of the Mayer–Preis match would win gold. Both women were fighting for the ultimate glory–all Elek could do was watch. The hall was in silence as Preis and Mayer lunged and dodged, both women seemingly equal. The result of the first bout was indeed a draw–the score being two all. The next bout was more aggressively fought, but yet again it was a draw–three all. The medal would now be decided by the final three-minute bout. Mayer needed just one more point than Preis and the gold would once again be hers.

To both women's utter disappointment, the result was a draw: four all. The judges added up the points, and found that neither Preis nor Mayer had won. Instead, the gold would be going to the Hungarian, Elek. Mayer won silver and Preis bronze. A friend of Mayer, Doris Runzheimer, recalled that Mayer cried. ‘She then said, “It's not so bad that I came in second but I would have loved to get a little oak tree.” Instead, she was given a lot of flowers for winning her silver medal. Because of a lack of vases, tubs were filled.' It was on the winner's podium that Mayer did something that she would regret for the rest of her life. After receiving her medal, she then stuck her right arm out and up–she performed a Nazi salute. After the way she and her family had been treated over the past few years–the banning from sports clubs, the denial of full citizenship, the lies uttered by the Sports Ministry–it was an extraordinary act of solidarity with a regime that had treated her like a criminal. For years, Mayer's salute would be regarded as an appalling act of treachery to her fellow Jews. But the truth was that Mayer did not regard herself as Jewish. She had been brought up as a Catholic, and she looked and felt like a
non-Jewish German–she really had ‘mendelled' to her Aryan side. Her talent, she thought, offered her an opportunity to shake off the stigma of her ‘shameful heritage', and would restore her and her family to their rightful place in German society. What better way to prove to the Nazis that she was one of them than to salute? Of course, another explanation was that Mayer feared the consequences of not saluting. Not to have done so would have required an extraordinary amount of courage, perhaps even a touch of foolhardiness. More than many other Germans, the Mayer family feared the midnight knock on the door–an impudent display by Helene would have guaranteed it, not during the Olympics, but a few months later, when the attention of the world had shifted. It is unfair to expect everyone to be a Werner Seelenbinder.

 

In the meantime Jesse Owens was continuing to wow the Olympic crowds. In the two qualifying heats for the 200 metres on Tuesday, 4th August, Owens ran the distance in 21.1 seconds, which bettered the Olympic record, although he was capable of running it in under 21 seconds. Few were betting against the ‘Dark Streak' winning his second gold medal, and fewer still were betting that he would not pick up a third over at the long jump pit. In fact, that Tuesday was Owens' busiest day at the Olympics, as not only did he have to race in the two 200 metres heats, but he also had to work his way through the long jump's elimination trials and semi-finals.

The events of the long jump competition at the XIth Olympiad comprise one of the largest myths associated with the modern Olympics. According to the legend–largely propagated by Owens in countless after-dinner speeches and interviews–Owens won gold in the event only thanks to the heroic sportsmanship displayed by nearest rival, Germany's Carl ‘Luz' Long. Like Erich Borchmeyer, Long was the usual archetype of the Aryan athlete–tall, fair, muscular. ‘Taller than I was by an inch, maybe two,' Owens wrote in one of his autobiographies later, ‘Long was one of those rare athletic happenings you come to recognise after years in competition–a perfectly proportioned body, every lithe but powerful cord a celebration of pulsing natural muscle, stunningly compressed and honed by tens of thousands of obvious hours of sweat and determination. He may have been
my archenemy, but I had to stand in awe and just stare at Luz Long for several seconds.'

Referring to Long as his ‘archenemy' was a classic piece of ghostwritten spin to satisfy those with a taste for a tale of good versus evil. (The book even makes preposterous suggestions that Long was personally appointed by Hitler to act as Owens' nemesis.) The truth was that Owens would not have had time to stand and marvel at Long in this uncharacteristically homo-erotic fashion. The elimination trials were running simultaneously with the 200 metres heats, and Owens found himself having to dash from his first race in his tracksuit in order to qualify. Each of the jumpers had three attempts to make the qualifying distance of 7.15 metres, which was just under a metre shorter than Owens' world record of 8.13 metres. There should have been no problem. In the words of John Kieran of the
New York Times
, Owens ‘usually removes his jacket, takes one leap, puts on his jacket again and waits for the man to come around with the medal'. According to one version of the legend, Owens took a practice run-up to the pit, only to turn round and see an official had raised a red flag–the run-up had been determined to have been his first attempt, and because he had run past the board, he had fouled. Another version maintains that Owens had simply jumped and fouled, which was not unlikely as he had little time to prepare. Whatever the truth, what was certain was that he had only two jumps left in which he could qualify. ‘Forget it, I said to myself,' Owens recalled thinking. ‘You've fouled before. There are still two jumps left.'

In later years, Owens would maintain that his concentration was now in shreds, torn apart by a reporter who pestered him as he waited for his second attempt. Apparently the reporter bugged Owens about whether Hitler had indeed snubbed him, and pointed to the Fuehrer's empty box, which was supposed evidence that Hitler had no wish to see ‘
der Neger
' competing. This story is highly unlikely, as reporters were not allowed to interview athletes in the middle of the stadium. Owens then claimed that before his second jump, he once again looked up at the box to see that it was insultingly devoid of Hitler–‘his way of saying that Jesse Owens was inferior'. Of course, trying to establish Owens' thoughts is conjecture, but the notion that he was more focused on Hitler than on jumping is questionable. Everybody
who met Owens during the Games noted how free he was of political concerns. Owens himself told the famous American sports writer Grantland Rice after the event that he hadn't ‘even thought' about Hitler. On the boat back home, Richard Helms noted how Owens ‘did not feel that he had been insulted [by Hitler], as conventional reporting had it'. Whatever he was thinking, Owens took his second jump, and once again the result is disputed. Luz Long claimed that Owens overstepped the mark, registering another foul, whereas Owens was later to say that he had fallen short of the target distance by 3 inches. This again seems unlikely, as Owens, by his own admission, had not jumped less than a foot farther than the qualifying distance for over two years. Most other accounts state that a red flag was raised for the second time, which indicates that Owens had fouled once again.

It is at this point that myth takes over from reality. The situation was certainly dramatic–the world record holder was facing the possibility that he was about to be eliminated in the very first round. As Luz Long recalled, ‘I hardly dared think it: would there be a sensation with Owens dropping out on the second attempt?' If the American fouled, Long would almost certainly win gold, as he was capable of jumping a good 10 centimetres farther than his rivals. Instead of standing back and hoping that Owens would foul once more, however, Long walked up to Owens to offer him some advice. According to Owens, the conversation started with a matey ‘What has taken your goat, Jazze Owenz?', to which Owens responded with a brief smile. Long then proceeded to tell Owens that he knew what was wrong. ‘You are 100 per cent when you jump. I the same. You cannot do halfway, but you are afraid you will foul again.' Long then suggested that Owens jump off 6 inches before the board, in order to guarantee that he would not foul. Because he could jump so far, a handicap of half a foot would not jeapordise his chances of qualification. In fact, Long was so sporting that he even placed his towel at the point at which Owens should launch himself. ‘I could feel the confident energy surging back into my body,' Owens recalled, ‘as I stood still for that brief second before beginning my run.' He ran as fast as he could and leaped up when he reached Long's towel, landing well beyond the qualification mark. Thanks to Luz Long, his ‘archenemy', he had made it.

It certainly makes for a lovely story. It is untrue, however. Not one reporter spotted Owens and Long having a conversation before the jump. Nobody saw Long place his towel–or, in some accounts, make a mark–six inches before the board. The eyes of every American journalist were on Owens, and they wrote about his third attempt in such detail that it is inconceivable they would have omitted the fact that Long and Owens were seen to be having a conversation, let alone the sight of Long laying down some form of marker. Grantland Rice was one of those watching–through a pair of powerful binoculars–and he noticed nothing unusual. ‘I was searching for some tell-tale sign of emotion,' he wrote. ‘Calmly, he [Owens] walked the sprint path to the take-off board, then retraced his steps. Studying the situation a moment, the American athlete anteloped down that runway and took off at least a foot behind the required mark–but qualified!' Crucially, not even Luz Long could recall any such conversation. ‘Owens' nerves aren't that bad,' Long wrote. ‘He steps up again, jumps far in front of the line so as not to overstep and lands at 7.50 metres.' There is no mention in Long's account that it was his idea for Owens to jump well in front of the line. What makes the story even more incredible is the notion that Owens was not able to work it out for himself. As the American diver Marshall Wayne commented, ‘Well, how dumb do you think Jesse was? It didn't take too many brains to figure out that he was going to have to start farther back if they were faulting him.'

By the time the final took place at 5.45 that afternoon, the weather was deteriorating. ‘It [the wind] howls in at the north gate,' Long recalled, ‘whirls the red ash up into the air taking rugs, caps and hats with it. It's frightening. We're now jumping on the side of the main grandstand. Everyone is tense here too–they're expecting something from us Germans.' Everyone included Hitler himself, who was now in his box, hoping that at least one of the two German finalists–Long and Leichum–would beat Owens. The American had a compatriot in the form of Clark, and Maffei of Italy and Tajima of Japan accounted for the other two places. Although Owens looked invincible–he had broken the old Olympic record three times in the semi-finals–Long was no pushover. He too had beaten the record, although only twice. Maffei and Tajima had done so once. In the
semi-finals, Long's best jump had been 7.84 and Owens' had been 7.87–there was very little between the two men.

In the first round, Long, who was fifth in the running order, managed just 7.73 metres–a relatively poor performance which he blamed on the weather. Nevertheless, it was still a good 13 centimetres ahead of the others. Now it was Owens' first attempt. He sprinted down the track and leaped up, his legs kicking below him. He jumped well, but his distance was not measured, because he had once again overstepped the line. (In his autobiography, Owens claimed he beat Long with his first jump. The official Olympic Report and Luz Long say otherwise.) In the second round, Long excelled himself, leaping a mighty 7.87 which equalled Owens' best that day. ‘Luz Long! Luz Long!' rang around the stadium. What Owens did next is undisputed. Instead of starting his run-up, he walked up to Long and congratulated him. ‘I rushed over to him,' Owens recalled. ‘Hugged him. I was glad. So glad.' Long remembered how Owens ‘comes up, congratulates me, sporting and chivalrously'.

The American then returned to the start of the run-up. ‘I didn't look at the end of the pit. I decided I wasn't going to come down again. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.' Owens then sprinted down the track at a phenomenal rate. It was his speed which gave him such good results in the long jump, not his technique, which many felt left something to be desired. It mattered little. ‘I reached to the sky as I leaped for the farthest part of the ground.' To Long, Owens' jump did not ‘look like much', but the tape measure revealed that Owens had jumped 7.94 metres. ‘It's hardly possible,' Long recalled.