African-American athlete Jesse Owens, the son of a sharecropper from Alabama, won four gold medals and set three world records and one Olympic record in the 1936 Berlin Olympics disproving claims by Adolf Hitler (German head of state at the time) and the Nazi party of Aryan racial superiority. The next athlete to win four Olympic gold medals in track and field would be Carl Lewis 48 years later. The 1936 games were the first to have live television coverage.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Its amazing that Owens was coming straight out of college to win these medals and seal his place in sports history. I wonder if he had only competed on the inter-collegiate level before making the Olympics and becoming such a heroic figure in the face of Nazi Germany
ReplyDelete