Berlin Games (35 page)

Once more, the pressure was now on Long. The stadium echoed to the chant of his name. In his box, an excited Hitler rocked back and forth, while Goebbels and Hess had taken to their feet in nervous expectation. Through his binoculars Hitler watched the German run up to the board and leap. As he rose, however, Long lost his balance, and fell forward, clumsily landing on one leg. He had jumped a mere 6.50–not even enough to register on the scoreboard. Hitler leaned back, disgusted. Goebbels and Hess quickly sat back down. Once more the despised ‘
Neger
' had won. Owens still had a final jump, however, and he decided to make it a good one, one that would
emphatically prove his superiority. According to Grantland Rice, Owens ‘seemed to be jumping clear out of Germany' with his last jump, and when he landed at 8.06, the first to congratulate him was Luz Long. ‘Of all people I can understand what this jump means,' said Long. ‘He hugs me and replies, “You forced me to give my best”. For me this is the greatest compliment.'

Long and Owens then walked around the stadium arm in arm, acknowledging the plaudits coming from the crowd, whose number did not include Hitler, who had already left. Owens was seemingly not bothered by the departure. ‘I suppose Mr Hitler is much too busy a man to stay out there forever,' he told Grantland Rice. ‘After all, he'd been there most of the day. Anyway, he did wave in my direction as he left the field and I sort of felt he was waving at me. I didn't bother about it one way or another.' It was in Owens' nature to please others, and not give offence, a characteristic that the apolitical athlete was even willing to extend to Hitler. It is doubtful that Hitler gave Owens a wave–nobody else noticed it, and he was more likely to be waving to the stadium–but if he had, then it would show that Hitler, far from snubbing the athlete, was publicly acknowledging him. Judging by his earlier comments to Tschammer und Osten, Speer and Schirach, Hitler was unwilling to show any friendliness to the black athlete, let alone a matey wave from his box. Nevertheless, it had been a great competition, and Long and Owens formed a deep friendship whose intimacy should have required no embellishment by the American. Sadly, their friendship was not to last long.

 

Just under twenty-four hours later, Owens won his third gold medal, winning the 200 metres in 20.7 seconds–a new Olympic record, and only four-tenths of a second slower than his as yet unratified world record of May the previous year. One of the American reporters watching the race was the UP correspondent, Richard Helms. Owens would later tell Helms one of the secrets of his technique. ‘At the gun, runners tend to clench their fists,' Owens said. ‘This causes a tension to run through their body, and this slightly slows the first steps. What I do at the start is to place my thumbs on my first finger–it's just enough to keep me from clenching.' Trailing him by the same margin was Owens' fellow African-American, Mack Robinson, who just
pipped Osendarp of Holland, who was delighted to gain his second bronze medal, making him the fastest white man on earth. At the victory ceremony, the entire stadium rose to its feet, celebrating a feat that had not been achieved since the Games of 1900. The author Thomas Wolfe was sitting with the family of the US ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, which included his daughter Martha Dodd. He let out such a wild whoop of joy that, according to Martha Dodd, ‘Hitler twisted in his seat, and looked down, attempting to locate the miscreant, and frowned angrily.'

‘Owens was as black as tar,' said Wolfe, ‘but what the hell, it was our team, and I thought he was wonderful.' The writer's racism was of a gentler variety than that of Goebbels, writing in his diary that evening. ‘We Germans win a gold medal, the Americans get three, two of which are won by niggers. This is a scandal. White humanity should be ashamed of itself. But what does it matter down there in that country without culture. The Fuehrer is completely carried away with enthusiasm for the German achievements.' Goebbels was right, the Germans were doing well, but for the sport-loathing minister of propaganda the end of the Games could not come too soon. ‘If only the Games would finish now!' he wrote. Nevertheless, Goebbels was the first to recognise that the event was doing nothing but good for Germany. After the first day's events, in which Germany had won three gold medals, Goebbels was cockahoop. ‘A result of the reawakening of national pride. I am so pleased about it. We can be proud of Germany again.' It was hardly surprising that the minister saw the Games as a ‘major breakthrough' that was ‘helping us a lot on our cause'. Although many still denied that the Games were being used to promote Nazism, at least one man was privately honest that this was precisely what they were being used for.

In public, Goebbels dissembled. On 30 July he had addressed some twelve hundred foreign correspondents at the Zoo ballroom. Instead of hectoring the correspondents as he did the Berliners, Goebbels spoke softly, reading closely from his notes. He denied that Germany was seeking to use the Games as propaganda. ‘I can assure you,' he said, ‘this is not the case. If it were I should probably know it. Germany is of course willing to show itself to its guests from its best side. That is a demand of politeness which has nothing to do with
political propaganda. We want you to see Germany as it is, but we have no intention of showing you Potemkin villages.' Neither did the Nazis have any intention of showing the journalists the new concentration camps such as Sachsenhausen, which was being built some 20 miles outside Berlin at Oranienburg. As Richard Helms was later to write, ‘Most of the foreign press corps, and the embassy staffs attempted to portray German fascism accurately, but there was no such reporting easily available within the Third Reich.' Nevertheless, Goebbels thought the speech was well received. ‘World opinion,' Goebbels wrote in his diary. ‘Not much talent though. Still they are the ones who decide what people think. I make speech. Short but fearless and clear. Surprised at large amount of applause.' Typically, the journalists were rather more sceptical. ‘Few found it [the speech] fulfilled its initial promise that in these Olympic gatherings German propaganda should be wholly eschewed,' wrote Frederick Birchall of the
New York Times
, ‘even by Germany's master propagandist.'

 

At a quarter past four on Thursday, 6 August, what many regard as the greatest race of the Games took place. It was the 1,500 metres final, contested by twelve men, among them Jack Lovelock of New Zealand, Glenn Cunningham and Archie San Romani of the United States, Phil Edwards of Canada, Werner Boettcher of Germany, Luigi Beccali of Italy, Eric Ny of Sweden and John Cornes of Britain. Cunningham–also known as the ‘Iron Horse of Kansas'–was without doubt the favourite, considered the greatest American miler of all time. The American section of the crowd was particularly voluble in rooting for their hero, their shouts soon drowned out by the usual hysterical seig-heiling that broke out when Hitler entered the stadium just after four o'clock.

The twelve men started quickly, with Cornes making the running, Beccali tucked in just behind him. Buried deep within the pack, at around seventh, was the diminutive figure of Lovelock, his presence noticeable only by virtue of the fact that he wore a pair of black shorts and his distinctive black vest was emblazoned with a silver fern. After 300 metres, Boettcher launched a bid for the lead, and overtook Cornes and Beccali. The Englishman was having none of it, however, and regained the lead as they drew up to the 400-metre mark. It was
at this point that the imposing bulk of Cunningham surged forward to the front, with the 9½-stone frame of Lovelock shadowing him. Compared to his competitors, the New Zealander cut a slight figure, almost feminine. Nevertheless, he looked relaxed and in good shape, his arms gently pumping up and down.

With two laps to go, Ny decided to stake his claim for the leadership, although he was unable to pass Cunningham. Instead, he settled for second position, with the unshowy Lovelock in third place, although the medical student had the advantage of being on the inside, right on Cunningham's heels. Once more, Ny put on the pressure, and for 100 metres Ny and the American ran abreast, the aggressive Swede at one point forcing Cunningham's left foot off the track. Meanwhile, Lovelock stalked them, watching the two men battle it out. By the time the bell sounded for the final lap, Ny was convincingly ahead of both Cunningham and Lovelock, and was pulling away all the time. It was time for Lovelock to pounce.

He did so some 20 metres later. As with Owens, Lovelock's change of pace appeared to be the product of some magical force. He accelerated past Cunningham, and by the 1,200-metre mark he had eased past Ny. It looked easy, childishly so. It also looked cruel, as if Lovelock had simply been toying with the pack. ‘It was as usual a case of getting the first break on the field,' Lovelock wrote later, ‘catching them napping.' The crowd loved it, though, and cheered him on. A deflated Ny soon dropped out of sight, although Cunningham did his best to keep up, with Beccali in third place. The huge figure of the Iron Horse of Kansas bore down on the fragile New Zealand fern, but just as it looked as if the American was going to close the six-foot gap, some intuition told Lovelock to add just a little more pace. As they rounded the last bend into the home straight, Lovelock finally looked as if he was trying, his arms pumping furiously, although not as manically as those of Cunningham and Beccali. ‘I put in another little effort as a second response to dishearten and choke off a further attack,' Lovelock recalled. A few metres before the end, he turned his head to the right and almost had to turn it right back to see what had happened to the competition. Lovelock crossed the tape in 3:47.8, which broke the world record by a second. ‘I finished in perfect form, relaxed and comfortable, and jogged on another half lap.' In fact, the
race was so quick that Cunningham also broke the record, and Beccali in third, San Romani in fourth and Edwards in fifth had all beaten the Olympic record. Cornes came sixth, just a fraction of a second outside it. The two early challengers, Ny and Boettcher, finished second last and last.

Lovelock's race was followed with much interest in Britain, as the athlete was regarded as being as good as British. Although Harold Whitlock, a thirty-two-year-old garage mechanic from London, had won the 50-kilometre walk the day before, Lovelock's triumph captured the imagination. No one was more excited than Harold Abrahams, who was commentating on the race for the BBC. Discarding any pretence that he was neutral about the result, Abrahams made what is regarded as the most partial commentary in the history of broadcasting. By the end, the former Olympian was screaming into the microphone.

Abrahams was not the only Briton to get carried away. The
Manchester Guardian
was similarly rapturous, calling it ‘a race magnificent beyond all description', and its correspondent, E. A. Montague, sheepishly admitted that ‘one's memories of that delirious last lap are a little incoherent'. In his diary that evening, Lovelock was his usual immodest self, but then perhaps he deserved to be. ‘It was undoubtedly the most beautifully executed race of my career,' he wrote, ‘a true climax to 8 years steady work, an artistic creation.' He then added, ‘Later felt a little weary but v. fit.'

 

Also running hard that day was Charles Leonard, who was competing in the final event of the modern pentathlon–the punishing 4,000-metre cross-country run. The previous day, Leonard had done well in the 300-metre swimming, finishing in sixth place with a time of 4:40.9. In total, he now had 32 points. The athletes' points were the sum of their places in each event–the best overall score possible there
fore being 5 points if an athlete came first in all five events. The competition was won by the competitor with the fewest points. Gotthardt Handrick, the German favourite, managed to come ninth in the swimming, completing the distance in 4:51.9. He now had 17½ points. Leonard knew that Handrick was way out in front, and that he would have to beat him by at least fifteen places in order to win the gold. There was other competition too, however, in the form of Thofelt of Sweden, who had 23 points, Orbán of Hungary with 39½ points and Abba of Italy, who had 40½. Before the run started, Leonard was on course for a bronze medal. But he desperately wanted to beat both Handrick and the Swede, who had won the gold in 1928.

The runners assembled at the grounds of the Wannsee Gold Club at nine o'clock that morning. The weather was pleasantly cool, perfect for cross-country running. Leonard was dressed rather more athletically for this event, wearing white shorts and a white vest with red and blue stripes running diagonally across it. Instead of running as a pack, the competitors started individually, with a one-minute delay between them. Leonard knew that he would have to run faster than he had ever imagined possible if he was going to win gold or silver. The first 400 metres were relatively easy, running through pleasant woodland before the course descended down a steep ravine to a glade. Leonard followed the chalk line that designated the course, noting how officials had been placed in the stretches where short cuts could have been taken by unscrupulous athletes. The second kilometre was tougher, half of it uphill. By now some of the competitors were beginning to flag, but Leonard kept pushing himself. He had to do better than bronze, he told himself. For the third kilometre, Leonard found that the line continued to snake its way uphill, this time across a meadow, before plunging down into some woodland. He soon began to pass some of his fellow competitors, who had either dropped out or who were running no faster than walking pace. Halfway through the final kilometre, the course ascended a nastily steep hill and ran through some trees. Leonard was so exhausted that he doubted whether he would be able to get up the hill. He was soon rewarded, however, by a sight that gave him a much-needed boost. It was Thofelt, who was near to collapse. Leonard sprinted past him, realising that the silver medal at least was in his reach. For the last 300
metres he forced himself to go as fast as possible, and to ignore the pain. As soon as he crossed the line, he collapsed into the arms of a German army officer and his coach, who put a blanket over his shoulders. ‘The hilly, sandy, rough trail […] was as difficult a trek as I've ever seen,' he wrote in his diary. ‘I was worn out when I was done, I'll tell you that,' he later recalled.