Jesse Owens and Lutz Long: Humanity in the face of adversity

Jesse Owens wins the long jump at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Adolf Hitler, with the Final Solution as his primal objective in his mind, looked on with speculative eyes, from the stands of the Berlin Olympic Stadium, as the Long Jump was in progress.

During a time when racial supremacy and its absolute enforcement was the preoccupation of Germany, the Berlin Olympics exemplified, as to how sports annihilates all racial discrepancies and ideas of supremacy. What was devised primarily as mechanism to propagate the idea of “Aryan racial supremacy “, now turned out to be an exemplary occasion, when a young black athlete from Cleveland, Ohio, would win the 100, 200 and 4×100 events, and make a resounding statement, seemingly deconstructing the whole Nazi propaganda, in fact, making it seem all too improper and trivial at the same time.

In 1964, Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan made the movie Jesse Owens Returns To Berlin. In this movie Jesse Owens narrates his experience to Kai, Lutz Long’s son, and explains what had happened during the Long Jump. Owens had failed two attempts already, and a third, would have cost him the opportunity to compete in the finals.

“And your father came to my assistance,” Owens says in the film. “And he helped me measure a foot back of the takeoff board — and then I came down and I hit between these two marks. And therefore I qualified. And that led to the victory in the running broad jump.”

In the finals that afternoon, Lutz Long’s fifth jump matched Owens’ 25-10. But Owens’ performance only improved with every jump, as he leaped 26-3¾ on his next attempt, and, eventually won the gold medal with a final jump of 26-5½, just 2½ inches short of the world record he had set, a year before the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Jesse Owens(center) defeats Lutz Long(right) in the Long Jump at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

As the stands comprising of hundreds of Germans, erupted with a resounding thunder of applause, the very first person to embrace Owens and congratulate him, was no other than his adversary Lutz Long, the “archetypical” German man, who was “tall, blue-eyed and blonde”.

“It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler,” Owens said. “You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace. The sad part of the story is I never saw Long again. He was killed in World War II.”

Owens would continue that golden relationship established in 1936, by meeting Lutz Long’s son, Kai. Marlene Dortch, Owens’ granddaughter went to Berlin in the August of 2009, to meet Kai Long, and join the celebrations at the Track and Field World Championships, which marked the return of the American athletic team to Berlin, since the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Adroit the impending doom, which was inevitable for all those who were unable to act according to the Nazi decree, Lutz Long reckoned the human essence of sports like none other, and rendered help to an arch rival.

Lutz Long displayed extraordinary grit and sportsmanship, and for this, he shall forever be remember in the annals of history, not just as a great athlete, but a human being of surreal character, indifferent to the obnoxious ideals which his country professed.

Friendship Beyond Racial Boundaries.

In a final letter to Jesse Owens, Lutz Long writes, “Someday find my son … tell him about how things can be between men on this Earth.”

Hence, this tale of camaraderie and courage shall remain eternally glorious in the history of sports and humanity.