Stone that envelops sporting and social history

ATHLETICS: Nothing can fully prepare you for the moment you encounter the political and sporting ghosts that haunt the Olympic…

ATHLETICS:Nothing can fully prepare you for the moment you encounter the political and sporting ghosts that haunt the Olympic Stadium in Berlin writes IAN O'RIORDAN

SOME SPORTING arenas strike you with their sense of scale and design. Some have other statements to make. No matter how much you’ve read or heard about it, nothing can fully prepare you for the moment you first walk into the old Olympic Stadium in Berlin. It blew my mind – and I’m not just talking about that blue running track.

There’s an unmistakably haunted sense about the place, a bit like Rome’s Colosseum, and no prizes for guessing why. If the ghost of Adolf Hitler doesn’t get you first, then the ghost of Jesse Owens will.

You don’t have to believe in ghosts to feel their presence around here. It may be 73 years since they left their shadows on the old ground, but such is their lasting attachment to the place that it could have been yesterday. In many ways, 1936 will last forever.

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Without Hitler the stadium would never have been built. Without Owens it would never have been immortalised. They wrote completely different chapters into world history, but for two weeks that August their stories were magnificently intertwined, and the Olympic Stadium, despite a thorough renovation five years ago, makes no secret of that. If anything, it celebrates it.

We walked up to it yesterday morning, my dad and I, after coming off the S-Bahn next to Jesse-Owens-Allee, the long boulevard renamed in his honour in 1984, four years after his death. We entered through the West Gate, which according to a large photographic display right next to it is where Hitler entered throughout the 1936 Olympics. There’s one particularly compelling shot of Hitler being escorted in as several guards greet him with the Nazi salute. Amazing.

My dad is the self-confessed worst tourist in the world, but even he stopped to wonder for a while at the history of the place. Just inside the West Gate they’ve preserved the 10-ton Olympic Bell, which had in 1936 hung from the old bell tower, and was rung daily to announce the start of the competitions. There’s a large crack down one side of it, which in an utterly symbolic way now partially obliterates the swastika at the bottom edge.

In keeping with the spirit of the Third Reich the place is enormous, five miles west of the Brandenburg Gate, and spread over a green area of 350 acres. The stadium – known locally as the Olympiastadion – is clearly the epicentre and was used as a sporting venue long before the 1936 Olympics. In 1912, Berlin was chosen to stage the 1916 Olympics, but we all know what happened then. Still, they’d gone and built the 40,000-seater Deutsches Stadion, sunk 40 metres into the ground to preserve the view of what was then the Grunewald racecourse.

When all was forgiven and Germany got their second chance to stage the Olympics, for 1936, the Deutsches Stadion was still the preferred venue. Then Hitler was brought along to view the site. His master of propaganda, Dr Goebbels, had convinced him how useful the Olympics would be in promoting the new Reich, and Hitler promptly scaled up the project. They tore down the old Deutsches Stadion, and, using the same deep foundation, built the 110,000-seater Olympiastadion.

Ultimately what separated Berlin’s stadium from anything else before or since was the finishing touch: 40,000 cubic yards of Germany’s finest natural stone; limestone from Franconia; basalt from Eifel; granite and marble from Silesia, and travertine from Wurttemberg. This still looks as well today as it did in 1936.

Touch that stone and history runs off it – not just sporting history but cultural and social history, too. Today, it seats a more modest 76,000, and when they brushed it up for the 2006 World Cup final they extended the roof with cool transparent panels.

Inside, for the first time, we couldn’t help but feel the ghost of Jesse Owens. It was an unbelievable feeling to look down at the long jump pit and think that’s where he won the third of his four gold medals.

Owens came to Berlin already destined for greatness, having set five world records, and equalling a sixth, during an incredible 45-minute period at the 1935 American collegiate championships. If Owens was under any pressure in Berlin he didn’t show it, and quickly lived up to expectations by winning the 100 and 200 metres.

At the same time the many myths of Jesse Owens were being created. For years, the story was told that Hitler had snubbed Owens after the 100 metres by not inviting him to his Führer’s box, when actually the decision was made that Hitler wouldn’t invite any athletes into his box, having originally agreed to do so on the opening day. Owens was happy to play along with the story anyway, and with the run of “bad luck” that followed him after Berlin – stupidly banned from athletics, menial jobs, bankruptcy – who could blame him?

The myth of how Owens won the gold medal in the long jump has also survived long after his death. Germany’s big hope in the event, the perfectly blond-haired Luz Long, struck up an immediate friendship with Owens, and during the qualifying round he reportedly advised his American rival to adjust his take-off spot, thereby helping him to qualify for the final – which Owens duly won. There is no evidence this happened, although the Owens-Long bond was indeed genuine, lasting until Long was killed in the Battle of St Pietro on July 14th, 1943.

For the organisers here in Berlin the myth is still more magical than the reality, and no harm. Next Saturday, Marlene Dortch, the granddaughter of Jesse Owens, and Kai Long, the son of Luz, will hand out the medals after the men’s long jump. That promises to be one of the most moving moments in the old stadium over the next nine days.

“You know, I met him once,” my dad said, as we walked around the stadium’s colonnade.

“Who’s that?” I joked. “Hitler, or Jesse Owens?”

“Jesse Owens, you fool. I was running down at the Drake Relays meeting. In Des Moines, Iowa. It must have been 1960. It was 1960. My old coach Dubby Holt had run with Jesse Owens in college, and knew him extremely well. Owens was at that meeting and I got to shake his hand. Got my picture taken with him and all.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Nothing. I was just in total in awe of him. I just shook his hand, and then ran away. I was so inspired I went out and ran a school record in the two-mile.”

We walked on past the pillar of the Marathon Gate, where the names of all the gold medallists at the 1936 Olympics are engraved. There was that name again, written as Lauf Owens, as if engraved only yesterday. We stood there in silence, momentarily overcome by the history of it all.

“You know, he eventually died of lung cancer?” I said, breaking the silence.

“Who did?” asked my dad. “Hitler, or Jesse Owens?” – and I don’t think he was joking.

“Jesse Owens.”

“Did he? I never knew that.”