Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Pushkin Goes to the Olympics

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Legends are made at the Olympics and this summer shows across the Pushkin network are bringing their unique takes to Olympic stories. This special episode includes excerpts from a few: a Cautionary Tale about underestimating female marathoners, a Jesse Owens story from Revisionist History’s series on Hitler’s Olympics, and—from What’s Your Problem—the new technology that’s helping Olympic athletes get stronger. Check out other show feeds as well, the Happiness Lab and A Slight Change of Plans are also going to the Games. Sylvia Blemker of Springbok Analytics on What’s Your Problem The Women Who Broke the Marathon Taboo on Cautionary Tales Hitler’s Olympics from Revisionist HistorySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Since it was established in 1861, there have been 3,517 people awarded with the medal. I'm Malcolm Gladwell and our new podcast from Bushkin Industries and iHeart Media is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Pushkin. Hello, hello. Malcolm Gladwell here.

Here at Pushkin, we love the Olympics. One of my strongest childhood memories was the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, my homeland's first Olympic Games. I was a kid. My family didn't have a television, but we rented one just for the occasion. Two rabbit ears on top of a grainy black and white set. We put the TV in the fireplace, because there was no other place for it.

And I watched everything. The Romanian Nadia Comanić bewitching the world in gymnastics. My running hero John Walker powering away around the final curve to win the men's 1500 meters. I still get nervous thinking about that race. Laci Viren's improbable double in the 5000 meters and the 10,000 meters. Alberto Wanterina, Cornelia Ender, Dawn Quarry, and the women's 4x100 freestyle relay. Maybe the greatest swimming race ever. I was a little kid and I fell in love with the Olympics and I've been in love ever since. There are just so many good Olympic stories to tell. So this summer, a bunch of Pushkin shows are giving you their unique takes on the games.

Over at the Happiness Lab, Laurie Santos will be talking with the coach who coaches the coaches. Maya Shankar is going deep with a whole suite of swimmers talking about their slight change of plans. And my colleague Ben Dadaf-Haffrey and I have done a nine part series about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the Nazi Olympics. And today I'm sharing a taste of some of my favorite stories

from Pushkin's Olympic summer. One from Revisionist History, another from What's Your Problem, and to kick us all off, a story from Tim Harford over at Cautionary Tales. For sheer myth-making about distance running, you can't beat the marathon. After the Greeks unexpectedly smashed an invading Persian army at the Battle of Marathon, a chap called Philippides ran 26 miles to Athens with the good news and then, so the story goes, collapsed and died. Thus began the legend of the Marathon. This is a race

so gruelling, a challenge so overwhelming that it could literally kill you. Women weren't allowed to compete in the first Olympics, let alone in the marathon. If it could kill a man, can you imagine what it would do to the fragile frame of a woman? The International Olympic Committee were reluctant to let women compete in any events at all and when they were finally persuaded to admit female athletes in 1928 the longest women's race was 800 meters. It was a disaster. The newspapers of the day reported the disturbing scenes. The New York Evening Post. Below us on the cinder path were 11 wretched women, five of whom dropped out before the finish while five collapsed after reaching the tape.

The Chicago Tribune added that one finisher collapsed into unconsciousness and required medical attention. A press syndicate reporter commented, It was not a very edifying spectacle to see a group of fine girls running themselves into a state of exhaustion. Other writers described the race as a disgrace, or dangerous, or opined that 200 metres was surely the maximum distance a woman could attempt without premature ageing and damage to her reproductive capacity. But this is all, of course, nonsense. Not just the stuff about damage to reproductive

capacity. All of it. There weren't 11 women in the race. There were nine. Not only did the gold medallist, Lena Radka Batshauer, break the world record, but so did the silver and bronze medallists, and the three women behind them. Which is, I suppose, what happens when an event doesn't have many precedents. Nobody dropped out, and nobody needed a doctor. No Matter Rather than celebrating the greatest women's middle-distance race in history, the pundits wrote whatever sensationalised nonsense they felt like writing. The International Olympic Committee used the fuss as an excuse to keep the women's 800 metres out of the Olympics for the next three decades.

If women couldn't be allowed to run 800 metres until 1960, you can imagine what the male-dominated athletic establishment of the 1960s thought of the idea of women running a marathon. But there were a few independent-spirited women who liked to run. And naturally enough, their thoughts turned to that iconic distance. One of those women was Catherine Switzer. As a girl, she told her father she wanted to be a cheerleader. You don't want to be a cheerleader, honey, he told her. Cheerleaders cheer for other people.

You want people to cheer for you. He encouraged her to run a mile each day to get fit for sports. And she did. She became a journalism student at Syracuse, where there were no women's sports teams at all, so she asked to train with a men's cross-country team. Sure, said the head coach. And then she heard him laughing with the other coaches behind her back. That only made her more determined. More encouraging was volunteer coach Arnie Briggs, the university mailman and, at 50 years of age, the veteran of 15 Boston marathons. He was full of stories about the classic marathon which had first been held in the late 1800s. And one December night on a miserable

training run through a snowstorm as cars skidded and honked around, Catherine had heard one too many of those tales. Let's quit talking about the Boston Marathon and run the damn thing. No woman can run the Boston Marathon. Why not? I'm running ten miles a night." Arnie relented. No dame ever ran the Boston Marathon. If any woman could do it, you could. But you'd have to prove it to me. If you ran the distance in practice, I'd be the first to take you to Boston. Now you're talking, she thought.

A few months later, and three weeks before the marathon, they ran 31 miles in training. Arnie turned grey and passed out, but Catherine was feeling great. The next day, at Arnie's insistence, she signed up for the race, signing her name, as she always did, K. V. Switzer. She and Arnie checked the rule book. There was nothing forbidding women to enter. Arnie signed up too, as did Catherine's boyfriend, Big Tom Miller, all £235 of him. He was a promising hammer thrower, had been a serious college football player and, no, he wasn't planning on training. He was pretty fit anyway and

if a girl can run a marathon, I can run a marathon. On Wednesday, April 19th, 1967, race day, it was snowing. Most of the field were running in tracksuits. There were 741 entrants. And Catherine pinned her number to her sweatshirt with pride. Kay Switzer 261. From the other runners, she got a few looks of surprise, but a warm welcome. Hey, gonna go the whole way? Gosh, it's great to see a girl here. Can you give me some tips to get my wife to run? She'd love it if I can just get her started. Arnie was beaming.

Big Tom, unmissable in his bright orange Syracuse sweatshirt, wasn't happy that Catherine was wearing lipstick, which might attract attention. Take it off, he said. I shan't, she replied. The crowd of runners squeezed closer and closer together as they approached the start. And then they were off and feeling great. Just four miles later, the fun would stop. Catherine Switzer was running with her little group, including coach Arnie and boyfriend Big Tom, feeling good and acknowledging the encouragement of the other runners.

At the four mile mark, the press truck pulled alongside the little group to allow photographers a good shot of that dame who was running the marathon. Then, Switzer recalled, a man with an overcoat and felt hat was there in the middle of the road, shaking his finger at me. He said something to me as I passed and reached out for my hand, catching my glove instead and pulling it off. Who was it? A protester? A crank? But he was wearing an official's ribbon. Moments later, I heard the scraping noise of leather shoes coming up fast behind me.

When a runner hears that kind of noise, it's usually danger. Instinctively, I jerked my head around quickly and looked square into the most vicious face I'd ever seen. A big man, a huge man with bare teeth was set to pounce. And before I could react, he grabbed my shoulder and flung me back, screaming, get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers. Catherine was terrified. She realized she'd wet her pants in fear

and she turned to sprint away as the furious official tried to rip the number off her sweatshirt. The press truck was still there, the cameras were whirring and clicking and then, seemingly from nowhere, 235 pounds of orange-clad college football player crashed into the official who flew sideways and landed on the roadside in a crumpled heap. Oh God, thought Catherine. Big Tom's killed him. We're in trouble. Run like hell! yelled Arnie, and they sprinted away from the scene with a press truck in pursuit, camera still clicking. It was an extraordinary

scene. And perhaps the strangest thing about it? Catherine Switzer wasn't the first woman to run a marathon. She wasn't the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. In fact, she wasn't even the leading woman in this race. A mile ahead of her, Roberta Bobbie Gibb was making serene progress without an irate race official in sight. There's so much in this Cautionary Tales episode. Two groundbreaking female marathoners and an epic 268 mile race. 268 miles along the spine of England. You can find it now in the Cautionary Tales feed. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for

gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. Since it was established in 1861, there had been 3,517 people awarded with the medal. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and our new podcast from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Media is about those heroes. What they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Without him and the leadership that he exhibited in bringing those boats in and assembling them to begin with and bringing them in,

it saved a hell of a lot of lives, including my own. Listen to Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Here are two things that define our era, an absolute obsession with sports and incredible technological progress. Sylvia Blemker works at their intersection. She's a professor of biomedical engineering

at the University of Virginia and the co-founder of Springbok Analytics. She figured out how to combine MRI scans with artificial intelligence to create incredibly detailed analyses of our muscles. Springbox clients include Olympic athletes, Major League Baseball, and a bunch of professional basketball and soccer teams. Sylvia Blenker talked about how her work helps elite athletes and people with neuromuscular diseases. In this interview with Jacob Goldstein, for What's Your Problem. What's one surprising thing your work has taught you about elite athletes? I never thought I would see muscles that were so developed. They broke our scale.

Wow. Yeah. Like it was just too big, the machine, the AI couldn't figure out what it is? Well, no, the AI found it, but we're like our kind of rating system. Wow. Was there a particular athlete or a particular sport or a particular muscle? What muscle broke the scale? The gluteus maximus breaks it a fair amount.

No kidding. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Yes. It's a pain in my butt. Like, because it's too big? Yeah.

Yeah. It's just so big. Uh, the other thing is that they have some tiny muscles too. Huh. Like, smaller than a normal person's muscle. Yes. Much smaller. They put their muscle where they need it.

What's an example? Like what muscle is tiny and what kind of athlete? Calf muscles are small and most fast athletes. You look at a sprinter or like a running back. It's just all quad, no calf? All like thigh, no calf. Yeah, thigh and hip. It kind of makes sense because, you know, if you're trying to run fast, you wouldn't want to put a lot of mass like at the end of your leg.

It's like adds a lot of inertia to like move your leg. Because, you know, the muscles are important for sprinting. That's the interesting thing, but they just don't, they're small. They're very small. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So I'm particularly interested at this moment in the sports piece of what you do. I'm curious, by the way, do you work with any Olympic teams or Olympic athletes? Yeah. Yeah. We've actually been working with several different Olympic athletes. The ones that probably that come to mind most are multiple players on the US Women's National Soccer Team. Oh, cool.

Tell me the story of that work. So they came to you, what did they want when they came to you? How did that begin? They came to us along with their team. So the technology we provide, you know, an athlete could understand it, but really with their team to help them figure out how to keep athletes healthy. So what did they, what did they say?

What did they say when they came to you? So for example, one athlete that's coming to mind had a known imbalance side to side based on a history of injury. And they really wanted to know where that imbalance was coming from. So the woman had had hurt one of her legs and that leg was, even after she came back, that leg was weaker essentially than the other. I mean, is that the sort of gross macro view?, macro way to say exactly. That's a, that's a nice way to put it. And, and, and they wanted a sort of finer like, okay, but we can see that, but what's going on on the inside, like

muscle by muscle, tell us that. Yes, exactly. That's precisely what we do. We go on the inside, because on the outside, you see perhaps that her knee extensor, or quads, seem weaker on one side than the other, but there's four quads, quadriceps, four muscles. And so it's not clear which of those muscles are actually the culprit for that imbalance, and in what way. Good. So this is their question. And then what happens next? So this first step is an MRI scan. And so with these athletes or teams, we have ways to connect them with an MRI machine, whether it be through an imaging center that we partner with, or we've even actually brought MRI mobile trucks to sites to make it easier. It's like the players run off the field and get an MRI

and go back and keep playing. Yeah, kind of, yeah. It helps just with the timing of things. So first we connect them there. So it takes about 10 minutes. Then they send those pictures up into the cloud into our Into our server and then we crunch through it and then we send back a report on their muscles We also have

What we call interactive viewer and it's presented in the form of a 3d model Three-dimensional model so you actually see your own legs, the muscles and bones, your own muscles and bones that we've identified from the images, going through a process called segmentation, where we we find all the muscles and bones and then we reconstruct them. So it's kind of like a digital twin of that person that they can see on their computer. And so along with it are a number are all these metrics that helps them understand their balance, the development or strength of the muscles and the health of the muscles.

And so in the case of this soccer player who came to you who knew she had some kind of problem with her quadriceps on one side, but didn't know what was going on. What did you find? We found some imbalances, actually not just in those muscles. It turns out that it's all connected. I think there were at least one calf muscle and then some in the, in the, especially in the deep hip, those were impacted. So yeah, it kind of shows up everywhere. To what extent can trainers or, you know, strength coaches develop programs that are sufficiently kind of fine-grained to match the kind of fine-grained findings you're having, right? Like for example, if you find, as I understand you did, that a soccer player has one

particular quadricep that is weak, like are there workouts that target a single quadricep and not the others? Yep, there aren't. That's cool. For whichever quadricep, you just, like, just for fun, give me an example. You know, one way that it's very simple is using something called biofeedback. So you can measure whether you use something called EMG, which is a way to measure how much electrical activity is a muscle. And then you can see which muscles you're using

for a given task. So if you give people the feedback of which of those muscles you're using for a given task. So if you give people the feedback of which of those muscles they're using and say, oh, no, you're not using this one, use this one more. That actually works very effectively. Oh, really? So you can basically use your brain if you're getting the feedback

to focus on which quadricep you're training. Yeah, and there's other ways you can give the feedback in other different ways. But yeah, our brains are very good at that once they get feedback, they're very good at learning. That's cool, especially somehow to think of with elite athletes, right? Because they are already presumably like super dialed in in terms of like the relationship between their brain and their body at this very elite level. Exactly. Yeah. The other, I was going to mention their brain and their body at this very elite level. Exactly. Yeah. The other, I was going to mention, um, a lot of players and teams use this not just one time, but over time. So they'll get a scan, figure out a

plan, work on that for maybe three months or six months, and then do another scan and see how things are progressing and adjust accordingly. So that's definitely another way to, in the long term, see if what they're doing is resulting in the change that they're hoping to see. So what happened with that soccer player who had the weak quadricep and other related troubles? Yeah, no, I think she's doing great, like staying healthy and, you know, getting ready. Yeah, so I know you can't tell us her name, but will we see her in the Olympics this summer? Yes, yeah. You can hear more from that interview and a bunch of other stories from people who are

creating groundbreaking new technologies on What's Your Problem? I'll be back in a minute with the final leg of this relay race through Pushkin's Olympic summer. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. Since it was established in 1861, there have been 3,517 people awarded with the medal. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and our new podcast from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Media is about those heroes. What they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage

and sacrifice. Without him and the leadership that he exhibited in bringing those poets in and assembling them to begin with and bringing them in, in saved a hell of a lot of lives, including my own. Listen to Medal of Honor Stories of Courage on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our last story today is one from Revisionist History's series about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The series is all about why America chose to compete in the games when it was already clear who Hitler was and what the Nazis stood for.

Ben-Nedaf Haferi takes everyone's favorite story from the Berlin Olympics about two athletes making good on the promise of the Games and breaks it wide open. About 4,000 athletes competed in the 1936 Olympic Games. But Jesse Owens is the one people remember. Jesse Owens was born in Alabama, the son of a sharecropper, self-effacing, soft-spoken, and an unbelievable athlete. In 1935, as a 21-year-old, he'd already set three world records in a single day, all in the same hour, with a bad back.

The world's most superb runner makes the others look as if they're walking, as he wins the final and equals the world's record time. And in 1936, even the Germans were expecting something great from him. Namaste, how many gold medals do you hope to win? It's the desire of every athlete to win a first place in the Olympic Games. In 1936, he was slated to compete in three events. 100 meters, 200 meters, and the broad jump.

Later, they added a fourth event, the 4x100m relay. He would win gold in all four. The only person to win four gold medals in the Berlin Olympics. And that is why you know the name Jesse Owens. But it all could have turned out differently. Because of that broad jump. You've seen a broad jump before. Today it's called the long jump.

And it's one of the more dramatic Olympic sports. The jumpers sprint down the runway, hit a takeoff board, and they look like they're flying. And then they land in a huge spray of sand. So the morning of August 4th, 1936, 10.30 a.m. in the Reichsportfeld. It's the long jump qualifying rounds. Best jumpers go on to the final. Owens had just run his heat in the 200 meters.

Immediately after, he headed over to the pit. It was the third day of the games, and by then he already had his first gold medal. So it was a surprise when he botched his first jump. By some accounts, he thought it was a surprise when he botched his first jump. By some accounts, he thought it was a practice run. No sweat though, he had two more tries. So he lined himself back up and started jogging down the runway.

He took off and came up short. He had one jump left. If he screwed up that last jump, he'd have been out of the contest, and he'd have gone from being the only athlete to win four gold medals in 1936 to one of three athletes who'd won three golds, right up there with Conrad Frey and Hendrika Mastenbroek, who actually would have had more total medals than him. And I ask you, be honest,

have you ever heard of Conrad Frey and Hendrika Mastenbrook? No. And probably if he'd missed that final qualifying jump, you wouldn't have heard of Jesse Owens either. So after the first two misses, Owens was rattled. But then something miraculous happened. Something that changed the course of Jesse Owens' life and made him a legend. It was cool that day in August. Clouds had rolled in over the stadium. Around a hundred thousand people were in the stands watching.

And America's most famous athlete, Jesse Owens, was screwing up. Badly. Which makes no sense. All he had to do was jump 7.15 meters to qualify. He already had a world record for jumping a meter farther than that. So what was going wrong? Malcolm and I decided to ask an expert. A legend, actually. It was about 10 years ago or so. The age was 65, I think. And I jumped further than my

high school mark. Is that right? Yeah. And you're the first American to jump 57 feet. One of the greatest American triple jumpers of all time, Milan Tiff. I actually jumped 60 feet, but they wouldn't recognize it because I jumped out of the pit.

And where did you do that? Right here at UCLA. Wow. And I jumped, I completely jumped over the sand pit and landed on the grass. I had grass stains all over the back of me. Going to see Milan was Malcolm's idea. So when I was in high school, starting at the age of 12, I became a competitive runner and I was obsessed with track and field and I subscribed to track and field news, the Bible of the sport as it's called. And Millen Tiff was this extraordinary,

first of all, he was astonishing looking. He looked, there was something kind of ethereal about him. And he had, as a kid, he couldn't walk because he had, I think, polio or something. And he was also an artist, really, really bright colors and kind of wildly imaginative and a little bit psychedelic. But I was just obsessed with him as this kind of like, this strange otherworldly figure. And he was a favorite in 1980.

Had we not boycotted the 1980 games, he might well have won a gold medal. Anyway, I cannot wait. He's going to be a little bit, he might be a little, I don't know, but I have a sense that he might be, he might be a little out there. This turned out to be pretty prescient. After meeting Milan Tiff, I felt like I had taken some kind of intense psychedelic,

the effects of which I've yet to wear off. The first humans, some believable. I understood that to walk is just to take a number of tiny long jumps. I found myself transfixed by an actually gorgeous painting of melons, portraying a pair of empty tighty-whities suspended in a blue abstract space called, mysteriously, Palm Springs.

And the birds and the trees would all fly down. They're just tapped into the same frequency as I have when I'm running and jumping. We flew out to Los Angeles where he lives so he could take us out to the UCLA track and when we got there there were several helicopters hovering above us the whole time which only made everything a little more surreal. And Olympic legends just walking up to him literally bowing down. This, I think, because they wouldn't normally see him. He told us he prefers to run in the morning, by which he meant 3 a.m. Tiff took us out to the broad jump pit to help us get inside Jesse Owens' mind,

which we thought he could do because he's a master of the approach, the part Jesse Owens' mind, which we thought he could do because he's a master of the approach, the part Jesse Owens was screwing up, but also because... So you actually knew Jesse Owens when you were a kid? Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, we'd, I'd sit and he'd tell the stories. Yeah. And I'd hear all the stories.

And, you know, he talked about his experience in Berlin. You know. We asked him to tell us about how you're supposed to approach a jump. And he talked about his experience in Berlin. We asked him to tell us about how you're supposed to approach a jump. You gotta have a giddy up first. That kind of rocking. You have to have some, or a jiggle we will call it. You have to have a jiggle or a giddy up before you even get into your run. That adjusts as you run.

Is that why, this is obviously the broad jump, but Luz Long, I noticed he does this sort of like hitch in his leg before he starts running. Is that what the giddy up is? Yeah, it's like a dance. It's like a preparation. Can you show us what your giddy up was? Well, it's like a one, two, three, four, five. Then you start your run.

Yeah. And I taught it to Willie Banks. Uh-huh, oh yeah. World record. Taught it to Bike Pile. World record. We gave it a shot on the track where, at the very same time, actual Olympic athletes were practicing for this year's games. Was it embarrassing? It was mortifying. Did we set a world record? Not even close. Did we become friends with any Olympians?

They were otherwise occupied. But this is the kind of dedication that deep historical investigations demand. What was, did Jesse Owens have a giddy up? No, he had to stay on start because he was a sprinter. You see? Yeah. That's why he was losing the steps all the time. He didn't have a jiggle. Well, he didn't have a jiggle.

No, he didn't have a jiggle or a giddy up. Yeah. And it took his competitor to say, man, come on. You got to do something first. Jesse Owens' competitor, facing down the pit at the Reg Sportfeld, Lutz Long. Lutz Long was Germany's champion broad jumper, Hitler's champion. And he looked the part. A fine aquiline nose, framed by your classic blonde hair and blue eyes.

As Owens wrote later, Hitler was in the stadium that morning to watch. Owens knew that he'd like nothing better than to see a black man lose to an Aryan. The thought was nagging at him, messing up his focus. And then he'd looked up at the box where Hitler had been watching the games, and saw that when Owens' turn came, Hitler had just left. It made his blood boil. That's why he was fouling out. He was psyched out by all of it, distracted,

and when he saw how amazing Wutzlong was at the broad jump, he began to wonder if there was something true about all this Arian stuff. He was down to his last jump. And then came the miracle. In an autobiography he published in 1978, Owens wrote, suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Lutz Long.

Look, there is no time to waste with manners. What has taken your goat? Obviously we had to reenact this. I had to smile a little in spite of myself, hearing his mixed up American idiom. Ah, nothing, I said. You know how it is. He was silent for a few seconds. Yes, he said finally.

I know how it is, but I also know you are a better jumper than this. Now, what has taken your goat? I laughed out loud this time, but I couldn't tell him, him above all. I glanced over at the broad jump pit. I was about to be called. Lutz didn't waste words, even if he wasn't sure of which ones to use. "'Is it what Reichskanzer Hitler did?' he asked. I was thunderstruck that he'd say it.

I, I started to answer, but I didn't know what to say. "'I see,' he said. "'Look, we'll talk about that later. Now you must jump and you must qualify.' I see," he said. Look, we'll talk about that later. Now you must jump, and you must qualify. But how? I shot back. I have thought, he said.

You are like I am. You must do it one hundred percent, correct? I nodded. Yet you must be sure not to foul. I nodded again, this time in frustration. And as I did, I heard the loudspeaker call my name. Lutz talked quickly. Then you do both things, Jesse. You re-measure your steps, you take off six inches behind the foul board, you jump as hard as you can, but you need not fear to foul. All at once the panic emptied out of me like a cloud burst."

Owens jogged up to the line and laid a towel to mark where Long had told him to jump. He lined up on the runway, maybe wiped his hands on his jersey, and then he ran. One step, two steps, closer and closer to the pit. And then he hit that mark on the towel, leapt into the air. And when he finally got that, he qualified. And later that day, with Hitler back in the stands, in the medal event itself, world record. He set an Olympic record. And that's when Lutz Long, the Aryan poster child who had just lost to Jesse Owens,

hugged him in front of Adolf Hitler. And the Hitler was pissed, man. But Long didn't just embrace him. According to Jesse Owens, later that night, they met up in the Olympic Village. The hours ticked on, and they stayed up late talking about their lives, the state of the world in the uncertain future. Some kind of strange bond had been formed between the men that day, because then the next day they did it again.

And after that, again, and again, and again. Every single night of the games, they met up to talk. They became friends. The dream of the Olympics was real for them. They bridged an unbridgeable gap between two cultures, two races. Something unbreakable had bound them. After the Games, when Owens was back in America and Lutz Long was still a Nazi Germany, they wrote letters to each other.

Even after Long was serving in the Wehrmacht, the Nazi army, back and forth across the Atlantic for years, they kept coming until right before Lutz Long was killed in the war. He was stationed in the deserts of North Africa. On some lonely desert hour, he sat down to write one last letter to his friend. I am here, Jesse, where it seems there is only the dry sand and the wet blood. I do not fear so much for myself, my friend Jesse. I fear for my woman who was at home and my young son Carl, who has never really known his father. My heart tells me, if I be honest with you, that this is the last letter I shall ever write. If it is so, I ask you something. It is a something so very important to me.

It is something so very important to me. It is, you go to Germany when this war is done, someday find my Carl and tell him about his father. Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when we were not separated by war. I am saying, tell him how things can be between men on this earth. There are tears in your eyes. You would not be alone. This story is a big part of the legend of Jesse Owens. If you look up Jesse Owens in the Encyclopedia Britannica, there's the story.

When they made a star-studded Hollywood film about Jesse Owens' life, Lutz Long and that qualifying jump are the pivotal moment. Retelling this story would help launch the career of the greatest Olympic documentarian of all time, Bud Greenspan. And I'm not an auctioneer, but I think it is the reason why Lutz Long's silver medal

sold for nearly half a million dollars two years ago. About five times the amount earned for any other silver medal at auction. It's arguably the most important story in Olympic history. It is proof of the Olympic dream. It made the case that it was good that America went to the Berlin Games because it made possible this improbable friendship that transcended even the Second World War. A story that was just too good to be true. You can hear the rest of this episode and the whole Hitler's Olympics series by following revisionist history. And if you're looking for more Olympic content, take a look at Happiness Lab, Slight Change

of Plans, and other Pushkin shows. This summer, we're all going to the Olympics. Thanks for help with this special episode goes to Sarah Nix, Sophie Crane, Sarah Bruguier and Nina Lawrence. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Since it was established in 1861, there have been 3,517 people awarded with the medal. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and our new podcast from Bushkin Industries and iHeart Media is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us

about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.