Olympic gold, won by a black athlete in front of Hitler, sold for $ 1.5 million

American billionaire Ron Berke at the CSP auction paid almost 1.5 million dollars for a gold medal won by a black athlete from the USA Jesse Owen at the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936.

The price of 1 million 466.5 thousand dollars became record for Olympic trophies. “We hope that the medal will get a public organization or museum so that people can access it,” Deutsche Welle quotes the daughter of athlete Marlene Owens Rankin, said even before the start of trading. The athlete's family intends to transfer part of the proceeds to the Jesse Owens Foundation.

"The appearance at the auction of the Golden Medal of the 1936 Olympics Jesse Owen and the unique result of trading prove that the athlete’s achievement is of the highest value today," said Dan Imler, vice president of the auction house.

Jesse Owens won gold in running 100 and 200 meters, long jumps and a 4x100 relay at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, which was supposed to demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan race, according to Adolf Hitler. The Fuhrer of the Third Reich personally became a witness to the triumph of a black athlete.

The youngest of 10 children, Jesse was born in September 1913 in Oksville, Alabama, then moved to Ohio with his family. He changed many professions and opened as an athlete at a technical school in Cleveland, where he set several world records. Despite the humiliation due to the segregation that existed in those years in the United States, he was able to achieve recognition as the greatest athlete of his time.

After the Owens won a hundred -meter, Hitler flew off the stadium, the angry, the eyewitnesses recalled. However, despite the triumphal performance in Berlin, the athlete’s houses were greeted quite coolly. “When I returned to my homeland, I could not ride in the front of the buses, and I had to enter and go through the back door. I could not live where I wanted. I, of course, was not invited to shake my hand to Hitler, but I was not invited to the White House to shake my hand to President Roosevelt,” the champion recalled.

After the Olympiad, Owen ran into extreme poverty. During this period, he made friends with the dancer Billo Robinson, who helped him find a job in show business to feed his family. In gratitude, he gave her his gold medal, which was auctioned last Sunday.

"Jesse Owens, the son of a mud and grandson of the slave, showed that he is capable of impossible for any of the Olympians of his time. His amazing achievements during the 1936 Olympic Games not only discredited the ideas of the dictator of Adolf Hitler, but also confirmed that only individual skill, and not the superiority of drifts or nationality, distinguishes one person from another. Olympiad It was only a starting point for Jesse to the final victory.

“Perhaps no athlete symbolizes better a human struggle against tyranny, poverty and racial intolerance,” US President Jimmy Carter said about Owen.

The athlete was recognized in the United States only in 1976, when President Gerald Ford awarded him a freedom medal. Jesse Owen died in 1980 in Arizona. Where three more gold medals are located is unknown.