What Made Jesse Owens a Legend?
Lyda Considine
2025-04-26 15:32:57
Count answers: 7
In addition to being considered the best athlete in the world in his time, he also won multiple titles that made the athlete become a true milestone in athletics. As if that were not enough, he was also the winner of four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the 100 and 200 meter dash, long jump and 4x100 m relay events.
Unintentionally, Owens exposed Hitler's supremacist theories by winning four gold medals and placing himself far above the German athletes. Likewise, and unintentionally, Owens became a figure against racism and the supremacy of the Aryan race.
Having looked back at the achievements and failures of the athlete Jesse Owens, we can safely say that his successes were the result of the athlete's perseverance, hard work and dedication, and despite not having had the recognition he deserved due to the political situation at that time, today he is a great legend of athletics.
Jimmy Morissette
2025-04-26 13:25:14
Count answers: 5
Two decades later, in Hitler’s Berlin, he won an Olympic 100m Gold which put a stake through the heart of Nazi racial ideology for all the world to see.
On 3rd August 1936, with Adolf Hitler in the crowd, Jesse Owens – the African-American son of a sharecropper – won 100m Gold.
Here, in the crucible of 1930s white supremacism, a working-class black man from Alabama had become the fastest person and greatest athlete in the world.
In doing so he left Hitler’s racist worldview, with all its absurd babbling about Aryan ‘Übermenschen’ and pseudoscience, shattered in the dirt.
But his win did demonstrate to the world how utterly absurd racist ideology was.
Wilfred Schinner
2025-04-26 10:47:41
Count answers: 3
His talent later led him to be known as one of the most important sportsmen in history – with numerous accolades and impressive performances. Owens competed in four events: the 100 metres, the 200 metres, the long jump, and the 4x100 metre relay. He won a gold medal in each, breaking or tying world records in the process. Owens’ success was a huge blow to the ideology of the Nazi Party. The sight of an African American athlete winning so many medals cut through Nazi propaganda around the idea of Aryan supremacy. Owens went on to become a worldwide symbol of determination and athletic excellence, with many people across the world celebrating his victory.
Noemie Marvin
2025-04-26 10:38:18
Count answers: 6
It was there that Owens rose beyond national to international fame. He won the 100 metre sprint, the 200 metre sprint in world record time, the long jump, in which he set another world record, and was part of the winning American team in the 4 x 100 metre relay. His haul of four gold medals was the largest of any competitor and his modesty and charm won hearts as well as heats. His sheer likeability as well as his achievements helped in changing white attitudes.
Marianne Flatley
2025-04-26 10:19:08
Count answers: 3
Jesse Owens, an African-American athlete and winner of four gold medals at the 1936 Games, set a world record in the long jump, Olympic records in the 100-metre and 200-metre races, and helped the American team set an Olympic record in the 4x100-metre relay. The Nazis considered his race to be 'subhuman', but to the rest of the world Owens became a hero of the Games.
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