Jesse Owens (Buckeye Bullet, 4 Time Olympic Gold Medalist, 8-time NCAA Champion)

[bkochmc]

FYI... Jesse Owens is on Sports Time Ohio right now! He is commentating about his experience at the 1936 Olympics... the show has a bunch of footage... very awesome stuff!

The show is called "Jesse Owens: Return to Berlin"

 

[PlanetFrnd]

Adidas is selling a very cool Jesse Owens tee right now - I picked one up in Berkeley this weekend. It might have to be part of my elaborate tOSU outfit for the USC game...



adidas - Originals Store: Men's Apparel: Short Sleeve Shirts: Owens Image Tee=

 

[Buckskin86]

Jesse Owens: Preserving his Cleveland legacy
Dick Russ

CLEVELAND -- He is one of Cleveland's greatest athletes and one of the most famous figures in Olympic history. But Jesse Owens just doesn't seem to be as much of a household name today.

"He's a football player, isn't he?" said one of the under-30 Cleveland area residents asked by Channel 3 News just what they knew about Jesse Owens.

Another young adult replied, "Is he some kind of news guy?" And a third, "I knew he was an Olympian, but I had no idea what he did."

What Owens did was stun the world -- and Hitler's Nazi Germany -- during the 1936 Olympics by winning four gold medals in Berlin. He triumphed in an atmosphere which promoted Hitler's notion that Germany's "Aryan" people were the world's "master race."

With Owens' legacy seemingly fading, especially among younger people, Mass Communications instructor John Kerezy of Cuyahoga Community College and his current public relations class gave themselves an assignment -- to find a way to preserve and promote Owens and his legacy and character, especially in Cleveland.

The Jesse Owens Project is the result of the undertaking of that class. Eight students are collaborating on strategies. Katelyn Yarmus understands there is much at stake.

WKYC.com | Cleveland, OH | Jesse Owens: Preserving his Cleveland legacy

 

[bkochmc]

Greatest Summer Olympic Moments on CNNSI.com... can't leave Jesse off a list like this.

Sports Olympic Games Track and Field Relay Races Carl Lewis Jesse Owens Gymnastics - SI Vault

 

[osugrad21]

Link

Owens: athlete par excellence S. Sabanayakan

Scuttled Hitler?s hopes of dominating the 1936 Games If there was one athlete in Olympic history who single-handedly held off a nation from completely dominating the Games, it was Jesse Owens. The athlete par excellence took on Adolf Hitler and his machinery out to prove the superiority of the Aryan race and emerged the unlikely hero of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
The African-American athlete reached the zenith of his career by winning four Olympic gold medals, a feat unheard off till then. At the new Olympic Stadium and in front of over one lakh spectators, Owens clocked a wind-aided 10.2 in the semifinals of the 100 metres.
Owens did not stop there. In the following days, he won the 100m race at 10.3s (wind-aided), set a new Olympic record in the long jump (26? 5 1/4); broke the Olympic record in the 200 metres with a time of 20.7s and joined the 400 metres relay quartet to set a world record at 39.8.
Ahead of his time The records he set at the Games stood for more than two decades thus establishing the fact that his performances were quarter of a century ahead of his time.
Cont...

 

[shetuck]

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Jesse Owens' memory lives

Jesse Owens' memory lives

The Ohio State sprinter made history by winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Games. Hitler had hoped to put his master race plan on display. Owens changed that.

By MARK McCARTER
Newhouse News Service

Last update: August 6, 2008 - 8:54 PM

Ruth Owens was prone to say that "Jesse comes back to life every four years."

It's that "every four years" now, with the 2008 Olympics opening Friday in Beijing. Jesse Owens' widow was right.

For all the Jenners, Rettons and Spitzes that have come along since, Owens remains one of the true Olympic icons, 72 years after an Olympiad marked by politics, racism and historic athletic achievement.

Owens -- "the tan thunderbolt from Ohio State," as reported by the Associated Press in less politically correct times -- won an unprecedented four gold medals in Berlin.


cont'd...

 

[bkochmc]

GREATEST U.S. SUMMER OLYMPIANS - SI Vault

 

[shetuck]

Thanks for helping pave the way to this special day.

I'm sure you had a great view from your seat upstairs.

 

[jwinslow]

:cheers:

 

[Buckskin86]

Nice read from a UK page on one of the greatest....

Great Sporting Moments: Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in Berlin
Sunday, 12 July 2009

The 1936 Olympics were the Games that Hitler hijacked to promote his racist ideology. But a quiet black man from Alabama made a nonsense of such ideas - and his triumphs came to symbolise the idea of sport as an expression of our common humanity. Mike Rowbottom on Jesse Owens.

GETTY IMAGES

Some athletes achieve immortality through a single, consummate moment. Bob Beamon travels through the thin air of Mexico City at the 1968 Olympics, on and on, before touching down in the sand. When he realises he has long-jumped 8.90 metres, or 29 feet 21/2 inches - nearly 2 feet further than the world record, in a discipline where increments are normally measured in inches - he collapses in shock. Filbert Bayi goes straight to the front in the 1974 Commonwealth Games 1500m final at Christchurch, and stays there, and stays there - and, 3 minutes 32.16 seconds later, with the field closing but not close, its leaders also running beyond their known limits, he has taken almost a full second off the world record of the great Jim Ryun.

These are the occasions on which events in track and field leap forward, and they are celebrated as such by those whose spirits leap up in witness.

But how to celebrate a man who produced not one explosion of athletics brilliance, but a series of detonations whose aftershocks still reverberate within the sport more than 70 years later?

When Jesse Owens collected his fourth gold medal of the 1936 Olympics as a member of the United States 4x100m relay team - his 12th event, including heats, in the space of seven days - he completed a unique sequence of achievement that still stands as an incomparable indicator of sporting excellence.

Owens's Olympic victories - in the 100m, 200m, long jump and sprint relay - were eventually matched, in scope at least, by Carl Lewis, in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. What gives Owens's achievement a far deeper resonance is the context. Unlike Lewis, who was feted on home soil, Owens, the 22-year-old son of Alabama sharecroppers and the grandson of slaves, was competing in the most intimidating environment imaginable. The scene of his triumphs was Berlin, where the racist ideology of the Nazi regime was building towards its full, awful intensity - and where the great instigator himself, Adolf Hitler, was a regular spectator in the stands of the Olympic stadium.

When Lewis competed in Los Angeles, he suffered some heckling in response to his decision to be economical with his attempts in the long jump (saving himself for the other events). When Owens competed in Berlin, he was operating within the framework of a regime that considered him intrinsically inferior.

Nazi propaganda was already portraying Negroes as "black auxiliaries". And, as Albert Speer, Germany's war armaments minister, recalled in his memoirs, Inside The Third Reich, Hitler was "highly annoyed" by Owens's series of victories. Speer added: "People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilised whites and hence should be excluded from future games."

Great Sporting Moments: Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in Berlin - Athletics, More Sports - The Independent

 

[Ttown]

I'll wager that not many of you know Jesse beat a horse in a 100 yard dash, many times. He did lose to about 10% of the races..

 

[Buckskin86]

Updated: August 5, 2009
Track bodies to pay tribute to Owens
Associated Press

Getty Images
Nearly 73 years ago to the day in Berlin, Jesse Owens (center) stood at attention as the 100-meter champion of the 1936 Olympics.

The performance of Jesse Owens will be honored in the stadium where he won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games when the world championships are held in Berlin this month.

USA Track and Field announced Wednesday that the organization, along with the IAAF and Berlin Organizing Committee, will pay tribute to Owens on Aug. 22. His granddaughter, Marlene Hemphill Dortch, will attend the ceremony.

The U.S. team plans to wear a uniform with the initials of Owens.

The organizations also will honor former German long jump great Luz Long, who befriended Owens at the Berlin Games. Dortch and Long's son, Kai, will present the long jump medals.

Owens died of lung cancer in 1980.

Jesse Owens' 4-gold performance to be honored in Berlin - ESPN

 

[Buckskin86]

Owens hits his stride
Simon Austin
Last Updated: August 07. 2009

Out of the blue at the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936, Jesse Owens, left, was added to the United States 4x100m relay team along with fellow African-American Ralph Metcalfe. The US won the competition. AP

Remember when... August 9, 1936

Jesse Owens was the master athlete who made a mockery of Adolf Hitler?s propaganda about the master race at the Berlin Olympics.

The American?s haul of four gold medals has gone down in Olympic folklore. What is not so well known, though, is the 22-year-old claimed his fourth gold in an event he was not supposed to be in.

Owens thought his work in Berlin was finished after he had added 200m gold to his wins in the 100m and long jump.

Then, out of the blue, he was added to the 4x100m relay team along with fellow African-American Ralph Metcalfe.

Sam Stoller, Marty Glickman, Foy Draper and Frank Wykoff were the names in the original line-up and the reasons for the changes were never made clear.

However, there were rumours that the Nazi hierarchy had exerted pressure on US officials to drop Stoller and Glickman, the only two Jewish members of their track and field team.

The American quartet went on to win the race in a world-record time of 39.8secs that stood for the next 20 years.

?When they mounted the victory stand and played the national anthem, I thought I ought to be out there, I should be out there,? Glickman later recalled.

So much of the famous story of Owens and the 1936 Olympics transcends sport.

Owens hits his stride - The National Newspaper

COLUMN: Triumph, Tyranny and the Rest of the Owens Story
By Jim Cnockaert
Sports Editor / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: August 8, 2009

Once again this week, the sports world will recall the inspiring performance of American sprinter Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The occasion is the world track & field championships that begin next weekend in Berlin. The meet will be held at the Olympic Stadium ? the site of Owens? triumphs almost 73 years ago.

Built by Adolf Hitler in celebration of his Third Reich, the stadium was meant to showcase Nazi claims of Aryan supremacy. But Owens demonstrated otherwise, becoming the first American track athlete to win four Olympic gold medals.

During the meet next week, USA Track & Field, the IAAF and the Berlin Organizing Committee plan to pay tribute to Owens, who died in 1980. The U.S. squad will wear a uniform that sports Owens? initials.

His achievement ? Owens won the 100 and 200 dashes and the long jump, and he was a member of the winning 4-x-100 relay team ? is worth honoring. It was a brilliant and courageous individual effort, one of the defining moments of the tumultuous 20th century.

But there is an unfortunate aspect to this story that few people know: It involves how Owens, who was scheduled to compete in only three events, got the opportunity to win a fourth gold medal.

It is a side of the story that in all likelihood, no one will mention during any ceremony honoring Owens. After more than seven decades, the sordid details would only get in the way, because they would have to be explained. It also would complicate what is ? in the history books, at least, and in many of our memories ? a simple story of one man?s triumph in the face of tyranny.

COLUMN: Triumph, Tyranny and the Rest of the Owens Story | TriCities

 

[Buckskin86]

'Hitler was there. But Jesse had gone to fulfil a dream'
Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Jesse Owens' feats at the 1936 Olympics defined the triumph of sport over political evil. Now his granddaughter tells Simon Turnbull how she is delighted to honour his bravery as athletics returns to take centre stage in Berlin

Jesse Owens leaps to gold in 1936

Marlene Dortch reckons she was "about five years old" when she first became aware that her mother's father was something more than just a regular granddad. "I think that's the earliest I remember seeing some film of him running," she says, speaking from her home in Fort Washington, Maryland, on the outskirts of Washington DC. "I remember thinking, 'Wow, how fast he was!'"

The reaction was much the same in the Olympiastadion in Berlin on the afternoon of Monday 3 August 1936, when James Cleveland Owens, better known to the world as Jesse Owens, sped to the first of his record four track and field Olympic gold medals. Up in his box in the main stand, Adolf Hitler, the German Chancellor, might not have appreciated the graceful style with which the sharecropper's son from Alabama, the grandson of slaves, left the opposition trailing in the final of the men's 100 metres but all around the vast arena, draped with red and black swastika banners, the 110,000 spectators voiced their admiration. "Yess-say...Oh-vens," they chanted. "Yess-say...Oh-vens."

'Hitler was there. But Jesse had gone to fulfil a dream' - Athletics, More Sports - The Independent

 

[Buckskin86]

Adolf Hitler 'did shake hands with Jesse Owens'
A veteran German sports reporter has claimed that Adolf Hitler did in fact shake hands with black US athlete Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Aug 2009

Jesse Owens: Owens felt the newspapers of the day reported 'unfairly' on Hitler's attitude towards him, Photo: AP

At the time, it was reported that Hitler had stormed out of the stadium furious that Owens, who had just run his way to the first of four gold medals in the 100 metres, had beaten his Aryan sportsmen.

However, Siegfried Mischner, 83, said that Owens carried around a photograph in his wallet of Hitler shaking his hand before he left the stadium.


Owens, who felt the newspapers of the day reported "unfairly" on Hitler's attitude towards him, tried to get Mischner and his journalist colleagues to change the accepted version of history in the 1960s, the Daily Mail reports.

Mischner, who was a reporter at the time, claimed Owens showed him the photograph and told him: "That was one of my most beautiful moments."

He said: "It was taken behind the honour stand and so not captured by the world's press. But I saw it, I saw him shaking Hitler's hand.

"The predominating opinion in post-war Germany was that Hitler had ignored Owens.

"We therefore decided not to report on the photo. The consensus was that Hitler had to continue to be painted in a bad light in relation to Owens."

Mischner's claims cannot be verified because all other witnesses, including Owens, are dead.

Owens, who died in 1980 aged 66, was the son of sharecroppers and won four track and field gold medals - the 100m, the long jump, the 200m and the relay race - at Berlin.

He insisted that he had not been snubbed by Hitler but made no reference to meeting him and shaking hands.

"When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticising the man of the hour in Germany," he said.

Adolf Hitler 'did shake hands with Jesse Owens' - Telegraph

Legendary Jesse Owens remains a hero in Berlin - Feature
Posted : Tue, 11 Aug 2009

Berlin - In this city, no athlete is so fondly remembered as Jesse Owens, the legendary American black sprinter who scooped four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, much to the fury of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. After World War II, Owens would re-visit the scene of his triumphs on several occasions. The Berliners loved him and feted him wherever he went on these return visits.

The only thing clouding his visits after 1961, was the communist-built wall which then prevented his moving freely about the city.

Owens, who died aged 67, in Tuscon, Arizona, from lung cancer in 1981, currently gets spotlighted in an exhibition titled "A Sports Hero - Jesse Owens" at the city's Sports Museum, close to the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, where the world athletics championships take place from Saturday onwards.

Legendary Jesse Owens remains a hero in Berlin - Feature : Sports

Usain Bolt: I want to be a legend like Jesse Owens
By Richard Lewis
11/08/2009


Usain Bolt dreams of being a legend - and in Berlin he has the chance to emulate the greatest of them all.

The track might be blue, the grandstands might be modern and the athletes might be running a fair bit quicker than they did in 1936.

But this Olympic Stadium has only one meaning - the place where American Jesse Owens carved a remarkable piece of history right in the face of tyranny.

A black former grocery worker from Alabama, Owens won gold in the 100m, the 200m, 4x100m relay and the long jump in front of Adolf Hitler, whose dictatorship was based on the supremacy of the Aryan race.

Owens' achievements will be honoured in Berlin next week with his family as special guests at these 12th World Championships - the biggest athletics event to take place in this stadium since those Olympics 73 years ago. If 1936 was all about Owens, 2009 is set to be about Bolt - the fastest man to have lived.

Lamine Diack, the president of the IAAF, believes his time has come.

He said: "Jesse Owens is surely the most iconic legend of our sport. He was not just an amazing athlete but an outstanding human being.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/more-sport/2009/08/11/bolt-from-the-blue-115875-21588595/