The Life and Times of Jesse Owens Quiz

Answer: A hearing mistake from a school teacher

Aged just nine, the Owens family left their hometown of Oakville, Alabama to find more opportunities in the more urban and industrial north. His new teacher asked him what his name was and Owens used his first two initials "J.C" as his name. When his teacher misheard Owens, thinking he had said "Jesse", due to his heavy southern accent, the name stuck forever.

Answer: His school track coach, Charles Riley

Riley was Owens' junior high track coach at Fairmount Junior High School. As Owens came from a poor, segregated background, he had to work in a shoe repair shop after school to help provide for his family. Riley allowed Owens to practice before school instead, giving Owens the chance to develop his running ability and keep food on the table.

Answer: 100 yard dash

Owens completed the 220 yard sprint in 20.3 seconds while also finishing the 220 yard low hurdles in 22.6 seconds, becoming the first man to finish in under 23 seconds in that event. Both of these 220 yard records could have broken the metric records for 200 metres, meaning Owens would have broken two more world records.

Owens jumped 8.13 metres in the long jump, and he would remain the long jump record holder until 1960. While Owens ran the 100 yard dash in 9.4 seconds, this only equaled the existing record.

Answer: NAACP Secretary Walter Francis White

White was trying to convince Owens not to promote what he saw as a racist regime in the United States as he believed that the level of racism suffered by black people in the country was unacceptable. White wrote a letter to Owens in December 1935, but decided against sending it.

After calls for a boycott grew in the months before the Berlin games, Brundage referred to protesters as "un-American agitators". Dassler was the first sponsor of an African-American athlete. Hitler certainly viewed Owens dimly, but was wary of revealing his prejudices on a global setting at this point.

Answer: 100m dash

Owens' first gold medal was won on 3 August when he won the 100m dash. He won the long jump on 4 August and the 200m sprint on 5 August. His fourth gold medal came on 9 August as part of the US sprint relay team.

No other athlete would replicate Owens' feat of winning four Olympic gold medals in athletics in one single Olympic Games until Carl Lewis did so in 1984. Somewhat ironically, Lewis won the exact same four events that Owens won.

Answer: Owens was originally not selected in the team

At the last minute, head coach Lawson Robertson replaced Jewish sprinters Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller with black runners Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. They teamed with Frank Wykoff and Foy Draper, running a world record-breaking 39.8 seconds time. The move was so controversial because many attributed the decision to AOC President Avery Brundage and his attempts to please Hitler by selecting less Jewish athletes. Even Owens originally protested the move, but it turned out to be a masterstroke for Owens and for the USA team.

Answer: Jackie Robinson

Mack Robinson, who was the older brother of future Baseball Hall of Famer Jackie, finished second to Owens in the race. Robinson was massively unfortunate, as he broke the existing world record in the race but was unable to beat Owens, finishing 0.04 seconds behind his fellow American.

Answer: Hitler had already left the stadium

It is a common misconception that Hitler snubbed Owens as he was a black athlete and not representative of the "purity" of the Nazi Aryan race. The 100m race that Owens won started at 5:45 pm local time, and Hitler had decided to leave before the race took place.

At the time, Owens said "Hitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave. Before he left he waved at me and I waved back." Owens always considered the media reaction to Hitler's "snub" as in "bad taste".

Answer: Olympia

Olympia was a German film produced by Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. It was the first documentary feature film ever made about the Olympic Games. It contained many advanced motion picture techniques, including unique camera angles and smash cuts. Even though the movie is controversial because of its political context, its cinematic brilliance has been praised by critics even in modern times.

Answer: Joined the Republican Party

Owens was a staunch Republican, even publicly endorsing Republican candidate Alf Landon in the 1936 presidential race. The Democrats did push for Owens' support, but Owens was left disillusioned after President Franklin Roosevelt didn't invite him to the White House after his Olympic successes.

Answer: Car manufacturer

Avery Brundage, as president of both the American Athletic Union and the American Olympic Committee, arranged post-Olympic tours of Europe by the U.S team to support those two organisations. Owens went to eight locations (including Cologne, Prague, Bochum and London). When Owens refused to travel the next leg to Sweden, Brundage instructed the AAU to strip Owens of his amateur status, ending his career immediately.

After 1936, he took up jobs working in a gas station, as a janitor at a playground and as a manager of a dry cleaning firm. He often raced against horses, and when asked if he found this demeaning, Owens is quoted as saying "What was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals". He toured with a twelve-piece jazz band for a while but found this unfulfilling. He did work for the Ford Motor Company, but he worked as an assistant personal director.

Answer: He disapproved, but changed his mind

Owens initially refused to support Smith and Carlos, saying "The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers." Owens clearly believed that money was where power lay, adding "The only time the black fist has significance is when there's money inside. That's where the power lies".

However, four years later in his Book "I Have Changed", Owens revised his view, saying "I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned".

Answer: Jimmy Carter

Owens was a heavy smoker following his retirement which unsurprisingly led to the four-time gold medalist suffering from violent lung cancer. One of Owens' last acts was an unsuccessful attempt to convince President Carter to cancel a planned U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

While Carter denied the request, he had great respect for Owens. The previous year, he gave Owens the Living Legend Award, a reward for people with notable creative contributions to American life.

Answer: Creation of the Jesse Owens Award

USA Track and Field (USATF) created the award in 1981, a year after Owens died. It is awarded to the top American performer in track and field events. Other winners of the Jesse Owens Award include Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson, Tyson Gay, Allyson Felix and Carmelita Jeter.

Owens was part of the inaugural class of the US Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983. President George H.W. Bush posthumously awarded Owens with the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990. That same year, a postage stamp in Owens' honour was issued. This occurred again in 1998.

Answer: Jim Brown

Brown finished fourth in the poll. Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali were the top three. Nicklaus, an 18-time major winner in golf, was ranked ninth. Louis was a heavyweight boxing champion who, alongside Owens, helped to normalise the placement of black athletes in sports. DiMaggio placed 22nd.

Owens was the highest ranked performer in his field, with Carl Lewis (12th) the next highest ranked track and field competitor.