Hitler's Olympics (26 page)

Velma Dunn could get a taste of this diversity because ‘in fact our badge let us into the Olympic stadium every day when we were not practising or competing. We sat within fifteen, twenty feet of Hitler every day. He used the same
Heil Hitler!
that all of them did.'
²

Neither Dunn nor the trekkers could have known that, almost immediately, the central story of the whole Games would unfold before them in the shape of the strong, lean frame of the athlete son of the poor Alabama sharecropper. (The other sports will be examined later but with exceptions – the fencing, swimming and the football – because amazing things happened in all three. The football match between Austria and Peru shattered the harmony of the Games and led to a mob stoning the Germany Embassy in Lima.)

As the trek to the stadium got under way, twelve telephone information desks came under siege in what would be a daily occurrence. Thousands of requests flowed in for information as well as for tickets.

When the first main number was dialled, the call went over one of the 20 exchange lines to one of the 12 information desks. The person dialling was automatically connected with an information operator who was disengaged at the moment. When all desks were busy, a special control light burned above each of the 12 desks. This warned the operators to deal quickly with the conversations in order to take the waiting calls. When an operator had finished giving information, the call light went out and by pressing a key the desk was made free for a new call.
³

Like so much else, the efficiency of the information system acted as a microcosm of the whole Games, with every eventuality anticipated, explored, covered, rehearsed.

If one of the operators could not give information in a required foreign language, she pressed a key. This turned on lights on all the other desks, indicating the desired language. At the same time, the call was disconnected from the desk of the first operator and was automatically held. The first operator who had received the call was now free to answer other inquiries. Any other operator could take over the waiting call by pressing a key. When this happened, the lights on all the desks went out. In difficult cases, the operator could obtain further information through calling other offices in the building.
⁴

The Summer Games had not been broadcast on the radio before, and transmitting the Winter Games showed what demands

would be likely be made on the resources of the broadcasting system – artistic, technical, and economic. The squeezing of the sporting and artistic events into the sixteen days of the Olympiad made it essential to work out a broadcasting scheme capable of transmitting the most exact Olympic programme ever drawn up. Only by this minute division was it possible to broadcast directly to the listeners of the world all the final contests of the Olympic Games in spite of the fact that the different groups of events were sometimes taking place simultaneously.
⁵

Sometimes between fifteen and twenty German commentators, extensively trained for months by covering national and international sports events, sat poised and ready to speak in order that coverage could be switched between sports. They worked from a centre dubbed the ‘40-Countries Exchange' – broadcasting to forty countries – and during the Games 3,000 transmissions came from it. The switchboard alone extended a distance of 21 metres.

The broadcasters had a lot to talk about. The 100 metres, like so many other Olympic events, operated on escalating stages of sudden death: initially twelve heats, the fastest two sprinters in each going forward to four second-round heats in mid-afternoon; the fastest three from each of these going to the semi-finals the next day with, an hour and a half after that, the six fastest competing in the final. Like every other individual Olympic event, it produced only one survivor, the one with the gold medal.

While the sprinters prepared, the high-jumpers limbered up. The positioning of the actual jump, near the stands, helped shield the jumpers from a wind recorded at 1.6 metres per second. The high jump worked to an even more brutal formula: in the initial round anyone who did not reach 1.85 metres faced immediate elimination.

The Olympic organisers had addressed the problem of timing, so crucial in track events but particularly the sprinting. Each day stopwatches, bought in Switzerland and ‘of the same Omega quality that had been used at the Games of 1928 and 1932', were handed out to officials for ‘all the contests in which timing by the hand is prescribed'. A watchmaker from the factory and a technical institute checked them daily for accuracy.
⁶
A timing camera, on a 40-foot tower to cover the full width of the track, provided back-up. It recorded the positions at the finishing line by taking a hundred photographs a second and slow-motion film could be used for reference in cases of disagreement.

A sensitive contact is attached to the pistol and through the starting shot an impulse of current is released, setting the time-recording mechanism in action. This mechanism is coupled with the slow-motion camera at the finishing line. The camera taking the photos remains out of action until the runners are approaching the finish. The camera then takes the photographs at the finish and records the time which has elapsed from the beginning of the contest. In order to deliver the photos in the shortest possible time to enable the judges to arrive at a decision, a special quick-development film was manufactured permitting cinematographic photographs to be thrown on the screen in the judges' lodge ten to twelve minutes after the runners had passed the finishing line.
⁷

In Berlin, very suddenly and very deliberately, the full force of current technological innovation replaced everything that had gone before. Many competitors, awestruck by the fact and scale of these advances, sensed that nothing would be the same again because there could be no going back.

Owens ran in the twelfth heat although the crowd, naturally, watched for Erich Borchmeyer, a versatile sprinter from Stuttgart who had been to Los Angeles, in the eighth as well. Cyril Holmes (inevitably known as C.B.) from Bolton, Lancashire was versatile, too, because he played rugby for England. In Berlin he is reputed to have worn shoes so light they were designed to last only a single race. He once said ‘the faster a sprinter moves his arms, the faster his legs will move'. How fast would he move in heat eleven? Not fast enough. He would come second.

Inevitably the fact that Owens went last meant each of the first eleven heats became a ratchet heightening the anticipation of the 100,000 in the stadium notch by notch. They would all know what Owens had to do.

The Olympic record, 10.3 seconds set by Eddie Tolan (USA) in the Los Angeles Games, had comfortably survived this first round of assaults. The sprinters for the twelfth heat came out and, as all the others had done, dug small holes to give their feet purchase as they burst forward from the gun. Owens was inevitably of his time: a running vest, shorts, running shoes and no socks, strong but in no sense muscle-bound. He had short hair and the easy, loose movements of a natural athlete as he took up the starting position. A Japanese, a Brazilian, a Belgian and a Maltese took up their positions, too. A millisecond after the gun fired he moved in his compulsive, clockwork lope, the legs pumping faster and faster and faster. The others melted back from him.

10.3 seconds – the record equalled.

He beat the Japanese Sasaki by seven-tenths of a second – an eternity in the world of tenths.

In the background nine high-jumpers went out with the bar at 1 metre 70, including the Briton Stanley West who, in his second jump, ‘employed the “Western roll” and strained himself badly. He had to be carried off.'
⁸
A further nine went at 1 metre 80.

The shot-putters were out, facing their own brutal elimination if they did not reach the statutory 14.5 metres.

Events, names, times and distances came at speed and with bewildering profusion, the authentic Olympic experience.

The high-jumpers locked into their semi-finals, wind from the west increasing in strength.

The women's javelin began, into the wind.

Helen Stephens came across Stella Walsh in the treatment centre. They gazed at each other but did not speak.

The anticipation heightened at the second round of the men's 100 metres: four heats of six runners and the fastest three in each going forward to the semi-finals. Owens went in the second heat.

A light shower lowered the temperature as the runners in the second heat prepared. Owens moved around the area behind the starting line, hitching his shorts up – an unconscious, instinctive gesture. Hands on hips, he took a couple of deep breaths and rocked his torso, keeping it in constant motion. He looked around but his body language suggested he wasn't seeing anything.

They assumed their places, Owens in the second lane from the inside, Haenni next to him. As Owens bent into the crouch he rocked his body gently as if moulding it to the moment. He raised his head so that, eyes wide open, he could see the whole of the track spread before him – and, perhaps, his life, too. He took a breath so deep it was almost a gulp, opened his mouth, tongue scouring it for moisture. His calf muscles seemed to be so taut they vibrated.

The starter bellowed ‘
Auf die Plätze!
' – on your marks.

The stadium of 100,000 fell absolutely silent.

‘
Fertig!
' – ready.

He exploded as he rose, those taut calf muscles freed. His thigh muscles gave him a tremendous locomotion so that his legs were visibly pumping faster than any of the other five's. In a great, sustained surge of power he accelerated away from them and for one astonishing moment a camera panning across to capture the finish had
only
Owens in shot.

He distilled it into a single word:
flying
.

The crowd made the stadium a tremendous, reverberating bowl of sound.

10.2 seconds.

He had dismissed the Olympic record from his presence.

Haenni finished in 10.6 seconds but he might as well have been in another race and, in a sense, he had been.

Metcalfe won the third heat in 10.5 seconds.

The crowd concentrated on Borchmeyer as the runners dug their holes and took their tracksuits off for the fourth heat. Much to the disgust of the starter somebody went off too early just after the starter's deep, commanding voice called ‘
Fertig
'. He swivelled his head in mock admonishment:
What can you do with these boys?
They settled again, were launched. Borchmeyer wasn't away fast but his strength carried him past the others, British runner Arthur Sweeney going with him and finishing a stride behind. McPhee and the Japanese sprinter Suzuki were so close that the automatic camera photograph was needed to separate them.

In the background, Tilly Fleischer beat another German, Luise Krüger, to win the javelin, 45.18 metres against 43.29, setting a new Olympic record. Fleischer, nervous, began badly in the early stage but her second throw – 44.69 – set a new record which the 45.18 surpassed in the final. ‘There was a tremendous outburst of enthusiasm when this finely-built young woman was conducted to the winner's stand, where for some minutes she stood stiffly at attention giving the Nazi salute. During this period
Deutschland über Alles
was sung fervently.'
⁹
Hitler had not been present but he was there for the shot-put.

In the foreground John Woodruff, an American who stood 6 feet 3 inches (‘I was tall for a runner') and had a 9-foot stride, finished third in an 800 metres heat. He was a lean freshman from the University of Pittsburgh, weighing ‘around 180lb [12st 8oz]' with an awkward running style. One of twelve children, his grandparents had been slaves. Hard times. His mother did laundry. She would remind him that he had ‘chores to do around our home and I was getting home from football practice too late to get them done. I had to cut wood and bring in coal. So, football would have to go, period. My chores came first.'
¹⁰
No one in his family had ever been to college before and he arrived at university with 25 cents. His athletics coach lent him $5 so he could feed himself for the first week.

He was, it seemed, in no hurry in his heat. He soon would be.

At 5.30 p.m. three events went on simultaneously: the semi-finals of the shot-put, the final of the high jump and the 10,000 metres – a stand-alone event, no eliminations or qualifying rounds, just this single chance for twenty-nine men.

The Americans were not to be held in the high jump: Cornelius Cooper Johnson (‘the kangaroo-legged Negro from California'),
¹¹
Albritton and Delos Thurber took the first three places and all three broke the Olympic record. Both Johnson and Albritton were black, a fact which Hitler hardly neglected to notice.