Jesse Owens Wins Fourth Gold: Smashing Nazi Myths

Jesse Owens was supposed to be proof of Aryan inferiority. He became, instead, the dominant athlete at Adolf Hitler's showcase Olympics, winning his fourth gold medal on August 9, 1936, as part of the American 4x100-meter relay team at the Berlin Games. Owens had already won individual golds in the 100 meters, 200 meters, and long jump, tying the record for most gold medals won at a single Olympic Games. No track and field athlete would match his four golds at one Olympics until Carl Lewis did so in 1984. Owens, the grandson of enslaved people and the son of Alabama sharecroppers, had arrived in Berlin as the world's fastest human. At the Big Ten Championships the previous year, he had broken three world records and tied a fourth in the span of 45 minutes — an afternoon many consider the greatest individual performance in athletic history. But competing in Nazi Germany carried an additional burden. Several organizations had urged an American boycott of the Games to protest the regime's persecution of Jews. The boycott effort failed, and Owens found himself on the largest stage of his life in a country organized around the doctrine that he was racially inferior. His dominance was total. The 100 meters fell in 10.3 seconds. The long jump was won after a dramatic competition with German athlete Luz Long, who befriended Owens and offered him technical advice during the qualifying rounds. The 200 meters was a commanding victory in 20.7 seconds, an Olympic record. The relay was almost an afterthought, with the American team winning by 15 meters. The common myth that Hitler refused to shake Owens's hand is inaccurate. Hitler had stopped congratulating individual athletes after the first day. Owens himself said the greater snub came from his own president: Franklin Roosevelt never sent a telegram of congratulations and never invited Owens to the White House. Owens returned home to a segregated country where he struggled financially and was reduced to racing against horses for money. His Olympic triumph exposed the hypocrisy of two nations simultaneously.