2012.01 — Triumph: the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics, Jeremy Schaap (2007)
The title says it all, really, as our author the estimable Jeremy Schaap tells the story of Jesse Owens’ astounding victories at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
I was a little disappointed in the tone of the writing, at least through the first part of the book, which briefly recounts Owens’ childhood and in more detail his college track career. I’m familiar with Schaap as a good sports writer — one of the best in fact, and a fine successor to his widely respected father Dick Schaap — and perhaps my expectations were a little high. Perhaps I’m being overly harsh. In any case there is a definite rah-rah Hallmark Card feeling to the early parts of the book, emphasized by the sometimes corny dialogue Schaap puts into the mouths of his protagonists.
Beyond feeling like I was being urged by the author to root for Owens (and honestly, why would I need such urging? Owens is an iconic figure in American and world sports history, and anyone picking up this book surely does so at least partly out of sympathy with him and a distaste for the Nazis), I got exactly what I wanted from the book, which was a detailed account of Jesse Owens qualifying for and competing at Hitler’s Olympics.
Two things piqued my interest the most while reading Triumph: one was the casual racism that pervaded American sports writing in the 1930s; the other was Owens’ unlikely friendship with German track star Luz Long.
As I mentioned earlier, Schaap got a great deal of his information from contemporary sports pages, including Grantland Rice, who I gather is a legend of American sports reporters (Bill Simmons named his new website for him, after all). Looking at the quotes pulled in this book though Rice was no less racist than any other sports writer of his day, even when praising Owens, which they all did very often. In the mid 1930s the theory of eugenics had not yet been laughably discarded, and a great topic of interest among sports enthusiasts was determining why black athletes did so well in track and field. German and American sports reporters alike took every opportunity to discuss why black athletes were so successful, with Grantland Rice frequently using the phrase “darktown parade” to refer to Owens and his fellow African-American teammates. Rice gave a sarcastic cheer when a white American won gold in a hurdle race, apparently not happy enough with the complete dominance of the US track team to that point because it had all been “our Ethiopian troops” winning all the races. The German press was less friendly, as one might expect (“If America didn’t have her black auxiliaries, where would she be in the Olympic games?”).
Apart from the sports writers, the very people who controlled the American Olympic Committee and the track and field team were themselves only a shade or two less bigoted than their Nazi competition. Avery Brundage, head of the AOC, and Deam Cromwell, the head coach of the US team, made efforts to favor white athletes in the face of the overwhelming superiority of Owens talents. Brundage actually kicked Owens off the team following the games for refusing to participate (unpaid) in an exhibition tour of Europe.
On a less depressing note, Jesse Owens formed a friendship during the games with a German track star named Luz Long, his only genuine competition apart from his American teammates (Long eventually took the silver medal in the broad jump while Owens of course won the gold). Luz, blond and statuesque and as Aryan as they come, approached Owens during the preliminary rounds and offered friendly advice while the American was in a bit of a panic after faulting on his first jump. He told Owens to relax and make his jump from a foot behind the board to avoid even the fear of faulting (the minimum distance needed to qualify was well within Owens’ ability). Later the two men would chat amiably on the stadium infield, and they even spent an evening breaking bread together in Long’s cottage at the Olympic village, sharing as intimate a conversation as can be imagined considering the language barrier. Owens talked about his upbringing in rural Alabama. Long confessed his trepidation about the direction in which his country was headed. Their unlikely friendship did endure after the games, and the two maintained a correspondence with one another, with Long signing his final letter to Owens, “Your brother, Luz.” Long was pressed into service shortly thereafter and was killed in combat in Sicily in 1943.
Schaap is not a historian, though he does an admirable job of setting the scene of mid-30s America and Germany. There are poignant anecdotes about the institutionalized racism in the United States at that time (and not just in the south), which he then shows in comparison with what was already happening to Jews (among others) in Germany.
Schaap’s real strength as a writer — his wheelhouse I might say in the spirit of the subject — is in sports writing. When the narrative centers on a sporting moment, be it a Big Ten track meet, the Olympic trials, or the Olympic games themselves — when the action is on the field, as it were — that’s when Schaap really shines. The scenes inside Berlin’s Olympic Stadium were very enjoyable to read, including descriptions of the races themselves, but also of the flag and salute etiquette during the parade of nations, and Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl filming her documentary Olympia. It’s chilling to read about a race or a discus competition and then to be told that among the spectators in the stadium were included no less terrifying bogeymen than Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler. There is also one truly bizarre moment regarding Riefenstahl and an American decathlete (no spoilers).
Despite some shortcomings, Jeremy Schaap does a good job of showing who Jesse Owens was, from his college career and rise to stardom to his dominance at Hitler’s games. We get glimpses of him away from the track (he was a devoted family man who also liked to stay out late dancing) and a brief look at his life post-Olympics (not all roses and rainbows but certainly not terrible). A good book for sports fans and non-fans alike, and a fine telling of one of the most iconic moments of the 20th century.
