Jesse Owens, Luz Long and the legacy of an indelible friendship

Kings without a crown. Moral champions. Anonymous Heroes.

Whatever we want to call them, the history of sport in general and Olympism in particular is full of figures who didn’t need to be champions to leave an indelible mark. Not only did they not need a gold medal. Sometimes, they didn’t even have to get on the podium to deny those who insist that it only matters to win, that nobody remembers the latter.

Luz Long, German, European champion in long jump in 1935, was one of those icons who did much more for the sport than winning a title that, in the end, was left in the hands of another.

Jesse Owens, an American, son of slaves on a cotton farm in Alabama, had already become champion in the 100 meters when on August 4, 1936, they met in front of the sandbox of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, the unmistakable symbol of the 1936 Olympic Games.

In the presidential box, whose structure has remained unchanged until now almost so that no one would forget the dark side of the past, Adolf Hitler hyper kinetically witnessed the development of a test that, for his nefarious pretensions of racial hegemony, became key.

It was easy to see that Long met all the aesthetic requirements of that delusion that, sadly, transcended supremacist madness far beyond sports. Tall, muscular, blond and light-eyed, he represented something like the identikit of Hitler’s imaginary perfect Aryan, characteristics that were not exactly those of the main person responsible for the greatest humanitarian tragedy in our history.

As is currently the case, the test consisted of a qualifying phase and a final phase. Unlike today, there were not 12 athletes who surpassed the first selection but all those who surpassed 7m15 —16 competitors did it-, there was a semifinal instance and only six competitors made the three final jumps of the competition held entirely on August 4th. No minor detail: in addition to the nine jumps, Owens ran the first round and the semifinals of the 200 meters that same day, a competition that he would win the next day.

After the first two jumps of the elimination stage, Owens was unmarked. The local referees had punished him with two null and void sentences. Although I have no record of any audiovisual testimony to corroborate it, some chronicles of the time say that in neither case had the North American stepped on the table beyond the permitted limit. Other chronicles say that, faced with this circumstance, it was Long himself who suggested that Owens mark a jumping position far enough from the board with his training diver so that no one would dare to punish him, given that the required mark was almost one meter shorter than the world record that Jesse had achieved a year ago in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In fact, despite the pressure and bewilderment — hard to imagine being cheated at an Olympic game and in front of a crowd — Owens passed the wheel with a record of 7m64, the best of the day.

The final quickly made it clear that it was a matter of two. Owens was always in front and in the third wheel he broke the Olympic record with a record of 7m87. Long surprised him by equalizing the record on a fifth attempt and went ahead in the tiebreaker because his previous jump of 7m84 had been the second best in the final. Right away, Owens jumped 7m94, Long closed his performance with a null and, in the sixth stage, the champion established himself with an extraordinary record of 8m06.

Beyond the unquestionable sporting excellence of this final, the added value and, surely, the most powerful memory are those of the image of Long being the first to congratulate Owens and wear him with his arm raised as a sign of triumph in front of a German audience that, according to legend, joined the chorus of “Owens, Owens, Owens” that was initiated by the German athlete himself. All in front of Hitler, who could not hide his indignation at a new victory under the nose of a black athlete. He still didn’t know that to his chagrin he was missing two episodes: in the following days, the North American would add the 200 and the 4x100 bet to seal the record of four golds in the same tournament.

On August 4th, in addition, a powerful friendship was born, sustained by a constant epistolary crossing between Jesse and Luz.

On July 10, 1943, Long, a member of the Wehrmacht in action during the invasion of Sicily, was wounded during the battle of Biscari-Santo Pietro and died four days later in a field hospital for British troops.

In his last letter, he asked Owens to contact his son Karl. “I want you to tell him how things were in other times, when war didn’t separate us; I mean, to know how different things can be between men,” he concluded.

And not only did Owens comply with the request, but he co-starred with the son of his rival-friend in the beautiful documentary Jesse Owens returns to Berlin.

The story will remain the moment when it was decided to name one of the avenues near the Berlin Coliseum after the champion and the horse races with which Owens had to earn his bread given how quickly they forgot his epic.

Also, a reflection by Owens that summarizes everything. “He had a lot of courage to fraternize with me in front of Hitler. All the medals and trophies I won could melt, and they would be worthless compared to the 24-carat friendship I made with Luz Long at the time.”

On days when the sports universe is unable to approach a fair equation regarding what measures to take as a correlate of Russian aggression against Ukraine, the legend of a tall, blond and blue-eyed German honoring the triumph of an American and black rival in front of Hitler himself, without measuring the consequences, could be a source of inspiration. Or, at least, a reminder: it is difficult for politicians, inside and outside sports, to be able or intend to seek a solution in this regard. Maybe it’s time for the athletes themselves to take charge of the issue.