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For them, life in Jesse’s wake lacked glitter
Jesse Owens won the 200-metre dash at the 1936 Games in Olympic-record time, the third of his four gold medals in Berlin. Owens's dominance will be remembered forever, but the silver and bronze medalists in that race, Matthew Robinson and Martinus Osendarp, also had fascinating life stories.
Jesse Owens won the 200-metre dash at the 1936 Games in Olympic-record time, the third of his four gold medals in Berlin. Owens's dominance will be remembered forever, but the silver and bronze medalists in that race, Matthew Robinson and Martinus Osendarp, also had fascinating life stories.
Robinson, who was known as Mack, also broke the old Olympic mark, with a time of 21.1 seconds. He was overshadowed by Owens, much as his accomplishments have been overshadowed by those of his younger brother, Jackie, the Hall of Famer who broke baseball's color barrier.
A track star at Pasadena City College in California, Mack Robinson could not afford the trip to New York for the Olympic trials, so a group of local businessmen raised $150 for his train fare. Robinson had no coach, and he qualified for the 200 in the same battered pair of spikes he had worn during the college track season.
He ran a sensational race in Berlin although his shoes continued to deteriorate. He nipped at Owens's heels, and finishing four-tenths of a second behind gnawed at him.
“Daddy always thought if he had better shoes, or some decent coaching, he could have beaten Jesse, or made it even closer than it was,” his daughter, Kathy Robinson Young, said. The silver medal meant little in Pasadena, a city Robinson compared to the Jim Crow South.
Robinson was reduced to pushing a broom, sweeping downtown streets while wearing his Olympic sweatshirt with a big “USA” on the front, unable to afford new clothes. Racial conflict cost him that job, too. When a judge ordered the desegregation of public swimming pools in Pasadena, the city retaliated by firing all its black workers, including Robinson. Mack wound up working in baseball, as an usher at Dodger Stadium. After decades of being ignored, Mack was chosen to be part of a group that carried a giant American flag into the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympics at Los Angeles Coliseum. “It was his greatest moment,” Young said.
The White winner
Osendarp, a gangly Dutchman who finished two-tenths of a second behind Robinson, was recognised immediately after the 1936 Olympics. He returned to the Netherlands a hero, the “best sprinter of the white race,” in the words of Han Hollander, a Dutch radio sportscaster. The president of the airline KLM sent a plane to Berlin to fly Osendarp home, where he was honored across the nation.
Before the 200 race, Osendarp shook hands with Owens, but they had no other interaction. Running in the innermost lane, Osendarp had a good view as Owens and Robinson shot past him. Osendarp concentrated on finishing third.
Osendarp became a police officer in The Hague while continuing to run competitively, capturing the 100 and 200 in the 1938 European Championships. He was training for the 1940 Olympics when the Germans invaded on May 10.
Osendarp's parents were Dutch National Socialists, so it seemed natural for him to sign up for the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, the intelligence arm of the SS, the Nazi special police. “I thought I had to do it; I was wrong,” he told Dutch newspaper Limburgs Dagblad in 1988. “Afterwards, I did ask myself: ‘What was I doing? How could I be so naïve?’”
Osendarp brought an athlete's focus and a policeman's skills to his new job, arresting several dozen saboteurs, forgers and spies, some of whom died in prison.
In 1945, Osendarp was convicted of war crimes and given a 15-year sentence. He did hard labor in the Emma coal mine in Limburg, near the German border. After serving 12 years, Osendarp was released. NYT