Berlin Games (41 page)

Despite its size and setting, the party did not seem to gel as well as those of Goering and Ribbentrop. Dodd noticed that there was little cordial conversation, ‘which is a rare thing at diplomatic functions'. It was hardly surprising that Eduard Falz-Fein described the Nazis' parties as ‘just champagne and talking nonsense'.

After dinner, the guests were once more entertained with dancing, a touch of delicacy before a fireworks display that held the guests in a mixture of awe and shock. At first, Dodd thought the noise was ‘shooting of a kind that suggested war'. The display went on for half an hour, which caused a great many to complain as the noise was akin to an artillery barrage. ‘People at our table trembled when the bombing made such a terrible noise,' wrote Dodd. ‘There were of course no real shots or shells, but there were explosions which almost made the ground shake.' Iris Cummings recalled her mother's reaction. ‘ “I don't like what this says,” she said. “This is saying a whole lot more than it needs to say.” It was very militaristic.' Even the teenaged Cummings could tell that the whole party had been ‘a power show'. ‘This was a “look how superior how we are”. It was too much and sufficiently evident to most us that it was another one of these “don't tell us that we're reaching too far” occasions.'

For Helen Stephens, the party went too far for other reasons. At some point after midnight, a messenger came up to Stephens and asked whether she would accompany him to see Reichsmarschall Goering. Stephens agreed, and soon found herself stepping into a room upstairs in Goebbels' house, whereupon a goblet of red wine was thrust into her hand. Sitting on a throne-like chair, with a table in front of him, was the enormous bulk of Goering, dressed solely in a black bathrobe, which was partially open, exposing his thighs. ‘His sausage-fat arms draped limply over ornately carved armrests,' Stephens recalled, ‘and as I was introduced to him, several scantily clad women crawled out from under the head of the long table where he sat.' As Stephens put it, ‘things weren't according to Hoyle'. Goering
got up, took Stephens's hand and kissed it. She suddenly felt trapped, with one hand on the goblet, and the other still held by Goering, who now asked her whether she wanted to join him in another room for ‘a little talk'. Stephens felt herself being pushed towards a huge double door. The athlete protested, saying that she had be back at her dorm, an excuse that would have carried little weight with the lecherous Nazi, who insisted that she join him.

Stephens was saved by an attendant, who told Goering that he had a telephone call. Goering, with faux politesse, asked to be excused, a request that Stephens was very happy to grant. ‘It's time to go,' the attendant told her, and led her, away. ‘Goering blew me a kiss,' said Stephens, ‘and that's the last I ever saw of him. I later thought, gee, I wonder what I missed out on.' Whatever it was, Avery Brundage would certainly have disapproved.

O
N SATURDAY
8
AUGUST
, the biggest race of Marty Glickman's life was just one day away. If the heats that afternoon went according to plan, then at 3.15 the following day Glickman, along with his teammates Sam Stoller, Foy Draper and Frank Wykoff, would be running in the 4 x 100 relay final, a race Glickman knew they had every chance of winning. So far, the team's training had gone well–the baton changes were smooth, and Glickman felt in good shape. The running order was to be Stoller, Glickman, Draper and Wykoff. It was a good set-up, as Stoller had the best start, Glickman had the most power down a straight, Draper was the most adept at running round the turn, and Wykoff had the most experience, a veteran of the Amsterdam and Los Angeles Olympics.

At nine o'clock, the four sprinters, along with Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe and Mack Robinson, were summoned to a small bedroom in the Olympic village by the two American track coaches–Lawson Robertson, who coached at the University of Pennsylvania, and Dean Cromwell, who coached at the University of Southern California. Glickman sat down on one of the beds, opposite Jesse Owens. Lawson Robertson stood near the door, resting on his cane. Grey-haired and ageing, Robertson was not in the best of health. Dean Cromwell, whom Glickman described as the more ‘dominant' of the two coaches–‘brisk, ruddy and vigorous'–sat in the armchair. The remaining athletes sprawled on the bed, or stood.

Robertson cleared his throat and began to speak. He told the room that the Germans had been keeping their best sprinters under wraps, and they were going to unleash them–like a secret weapon–for the relays. As a result, Robertson felt he had no choice but to replace Stoller and Glickman with Owens and Metcalfe. Draper and Wykoff,
Cromwell's two runners from USC, would stay on the team. ‘There was stunned silence in the room,' wrote Glickman. ‘This came out of the blue to me. I was shocked and angry. Being young and brash, I said, “Coach, there's no reason to believe the Germans are any kind of threat to the relay. To be a world-class sprinter, you have to compete in world-class competition.” '

Glickman may have been young and brash, but he had a point. The best German sprinter was Borchmeyer, who had finished fifth in the 100 metres final. Both Stoller and Glickman could beat him. What Glickman wanted to know was who these other German sprinters were. If they were so good, then why had they not already competed? Glickman maintained that no matter who the Americans were up against, they would win by at least 15 yards. ‘The only way we were going to lose, I argued, was if we dropped the baton.' With just a few hours to go to the heats, Glickman was concerned that neither Owens nor Metcalfe had had any practice baton-changing. It was far better to go with a team that was already coordinated than one that had not practised as a unit. But Robertson was adamant. Besides, he had already told Alan Gould of the Associated Press of his decision the evening before, and in a little under four hours American households would be reading of the personnel change in their morning papers. ‘I'd like to let everyone run,' Robertson had told Gould, ‘but we're here to win all the events possible. They are likely to criticise any decision I may make, but my job is to put the best possible team into the race.'

While the room contemplated the decision, Jesse Owens spoke up. ‘Coach,' he said, ‘let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it. I've already won three gold medals, I'm tired. They haven't had the chance to run. Let them run, they deserve it.' Owens' pleading earned him a sharp rebuke from Cromwell in his armchair. He pointed a finger at the three-time gold medal winner and snapped, ‘You'll do as you're told.' Owens then fell silent. If Owens did indeed selflessly request not to be placed on the team, then he was being disingenuous, as he had been informed of the decision the evening before, and had even said to Robertson, according to Alan Gould, ‘That's swell news […] I haven't known what to do with myself since Wednesday. I'll sure hustle around that corner.' Of course, Robertson could have fabricated the line, in order to win over the hearts and minds of any dissenting armchair
sportsmen back home. It seems inconceivable, however, that Owens did not know, as his coach Larry Snyder knew, and he had already speculated to Gould that the line-up would consist of Owens, Metcalfe, Stoller and Wykoff. It seems likely that Snyder would immediately have told Owens that he now had a chance to win a fourth gold medal. If Owens really did plead in that room that morning, then he was going through the motions in order not to make enemies of Glickman and Stoller. This eagerness to please was certainly in Owens' nature, and if Glickman's memory is to be trusted, then Owens was indeed being deceitful in his apparent selflessness. What added a further stink to the proceedings was the rumour that when Cromwell had heard that his USC protégé Draper was going to be dropped–which made sense, as he was the slowest of the American sprinters–he privately lobbied Robertson to reinstate him.

Whatever the truth of the situation, Glickman and Stoller were out. What escaped nobody was that both young men were Jewish, a point that Glickman raised in the meeting. ‘Coach, you know that Sam and I are the only two Jews on the track team. If we don't run, there's bound to be a lot of criticism back home.'

‘We'll take our chances,' Cromwell replied.

The seven athletes walked out of the room in silence. ‘I was an eighteen-year-old kid,' Glickman recalled, ‘angry and confused, not able to digest it all. Stoller seemed shattered. We didn't come together on this, partly because we were not particularly close, mostly because athletes in those days were docile, good little boys who didn't protest. Coaches' words were law.' As far as Glickman was concerned, the decision reeked of anti-Semitism. ‘I believe that Avery Brundage told Robertson and Cromwell to drop us from the relay team,' said Glickman later, ‘to save Hitler embarrassment by having two Jews stand on the winning podium before 120,000 Germans and the world's news media.' What Glickman lacked was proof, although he felt the circumstantial evidence was strong. The counter-argument to Glickman's suspicions was succinctly expressed by John Kieran of the
New York Times
, who wrote that swapping two Jews for two blacks was ‘a transfer that would not have sent Herr Hitler off into raptures of delight even if he had paid any attention to it'.

A dejected Glickman went to watch the heats at three o'clock that afternoon. The new team equalled the world record of 40 seconds. The Italians were over a second behind them–some 11 yards–and in another heat the supposedly deadly German team was 1.4 seconds slower, some 12½ yards behind. Even if Stoller and Glickman had been running, the Americans would have still had a comfortable margin. ‘The heats failed to show the necessity for shaking up the lineup after Stoller and myself long practised the stick work,' Glickman told a reporter from the Associated Press, before adding, ‘It looks like politics to us.'

Nevertheless, Glickman was sporting enough to attend the final the next day. Watching his teammates warm up, he couldn't help but think that it should have been him down on the track, readying himself for what was almost certainly going to be a gold medal. He studied Metcalfe, who was running the second leg–the leg that Glickman was supposed to run. ‘He looked strong, powerful, and confident,' Glickman recalled. And then anger coursed through him once more. ‘The dirty bastards have me sitting here,' he thought, ‘and I want to run. I could show them.' The Americans were drawn in lane four, between Holland in lane three and Italy in lane five. The Germans were in lane two, next to Argentina on the inside. On the outside were the Canadians. The other teams had little chance of winning gold, and they knew it. The only way any of them could win gold would be for the Americans to lose it, and to do that, they would have to drop the baton, or exchange it outside one of the three boxes.

Unsurprisingly, Owens got off to a blisteringly quick start. He streaked past the Italian Mariani in lane five, and a few seconds later he was ready to pass the baton from his left hand to Metcalfe's right. Owens had not had much practice with the baton change, and some maintained that the only reason why he ran the first leg rather than the fourth was so he wouldn't have to perform the far trickier task of actually receiving the baton. Even so, the changeover was not smooth, with Glickman describing it as ‘only fair'. Metcalfe roared down the back straight, his style as thunderingly powerful as Owens' was delicate. Metcalfe handed the baton over to Draper, but to one judge it looked as though the change might have taken place outside the box. Unaware of the potential problem, Draper maintained the Americans'
ten-yard lead on the field, a lead that Wykoff increased on the last leg to some 12 yards, finishing in a new world record time of 39.8 seconds. Italy was 1.3 seconds behind, narrowly beating Holland, which was anchored by the double bronze medal winner Martinus Osendarp. Osendarp, however, was missing one vital thing–the baton. He had dropped it 30 yards before crossing the line. Once the race was over, he buried his face in the crook of his left arm, knowing that the Dutch would be disqualified and that the fourth-placed Germans would take the bronze.

The judge who had witnessed the handover from Metcalfe to Draper still had his doubts, however. He was simply not sure whether Draper had received the baton outside the box. ‘Twice the judge started toward the official jury,' wrote Lewis Burton in the
New York Journal American
, ‘seemingly to lodge his complaint, and twice he changed his mind.' The judge then walked on to the track and studied the athletes' spike marks. It was unclear what had happened, so the judge gave the Americans the benefit of the doubt. He wiped out the spike marks and then stayed put. The American gold–and Jesse Owens' fourth–was safe. A study of Leni Riefenstahl's
Olympia
shows that the judge did indeed make the correct decision, although his doubts were understandable. The exchange took place only just inside the box, with Draper's right foot just about to step out when he finally secured the baton. Had the pass been ruled illegal, then there would have been an uproar. ‘The coaches would have had to explain to an unsympathetic public their questionable switch,' wrote Glickman, ‘and their dubious reasons for making it.'

Despite the win–or maybe because of it–Glickman was furious. ‘Those liars,' he thought. ‘Those fucking liars, Cromwell and Robertson.' The strength of his feelings was not tempered when he encountered Robertson in the Olympic village later that day. The coach hobbled towards Glickman, and said, ‘Marty, I've made a terrible mistake. Please forgive me.' Glickman mumbled some platitude about how good it was the team had won, and the two men turned and walked away from each other.

 

The women's 4 x 100 relay, which immediately followed the men's race, also had its moment of high drama. Once again, the Americans,
including the powerful Helen Stephens, had a good chance of winning, although the Germans looked even stronger. In the heats the previous day, they had actually beaten the world record with a time of 46.4 seconds, some half a second quicker than the Americans. It was going to be an extremely close race. The British wanted a place on the podium as well, however, a prize that looked likely as their time in the heats was the third quickest. On their team was Audrey Brown, whose brother Godfrey would be running with Bill Roberts in the final of the 4 x 400 relay a little later.

Helen Stephens took her place at the beginning of the third leg, which is where the German coach, after watching the Americans in practice, assumed she would run, and he had arranged his team accordingly. As soon as the Germans had taken their positions, however, Stephens, acting on a nod from her coach, Dee Boeckmann, swapped places with her teammate Elizabeth Robinson, who was at anchor. Stephens would now be running the last leg, a last-minute change that visibly upset the Germans, whose running order was now ill suited. Nevertheless, it was too late for them to discuss and then make a change.

The crowd in the stadium went extremely quiet just before the race started at 3.30. The Germans were drawn in lane four, with the British and Americans in lanes one and two. As the runners took their positions, the stadium became almost silent. Hitler watched nervously from his box. To his left sat Goebbels, watching the start through his binoculars. It was the day after that abhorrent party at the British embassy, and Goebbels had spent much of that Sunday morning lying in bed before seeing Hitler at midday, when the two men had discussed ‘English policies'. The starter told the runners to take their places. ‘
Fertig
.' The women got set. There was now a seemingly interminable wait for the pistol, a wait that Emmy Albus found so frustrating that she made a false start. An anguished cry went round the stadium, with Hitler gesticulating at the nervous Albus.

When the race did start, the crowd took to its feet, as did Hitler, who leaned against the handrail at the front of his box, yelling encouragement like any other sports fan. Goebbels, following his beloved Fuehrer's lead, sprung up as well. (Goebbels really did love Hitler. On 7 August, he wrote in his diary, ‘When I am alone with him [Hitler],
he speaks to me like a father. I love him so much.') Despite her nerves, Albus gave Germany a fine lead, which the mighty Kathe Krauss extended, roaring past Fanny Blankers-Koen from Holland. Annette Rogers ran well for the Americans, although it was proving to be a hectic afternoon for her, as she had to squeeze in the relay while she was competing in the high jump final. Nevertheless, by the time Krauss passed the baton to Marie Dollinger, the German lead was seemingly insurmountable, a lead that grew to some 5 metres by the time Dollinger passed the baton to Ilse Doerffeldt, who hared off towards the finishing line. Not even Helen Stephens, the Fulton Flash, could possibly overtake her.