Jesse Owens, (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an African-American track-and-field ____ who was most well-known for the 4 gold ____ he won during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. The 4-time Olympic gold medalist and setter of three world ____ was credited in his lifetime as “perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history”. Jesse’s ____ name was James Cleveland Owens and its ____ form, J.C., was really his nickname. Born in Oakville, Alabama, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio when he was ____ (part of the Great Migration; when about 1.5 million Black Americans moved from the segregated South). Jesse took odd jobs in his ____ time from school as a ____. It was during this time that he realized he liked ____. He attributed his successful ____ in track-and-field to his High School track ____ Charles Riley throughout his life. Jesse ____ in sprints and long jumps. The first ____ Jesse came to national attention was ____ the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago. The athlete-student equaled the current standing world ____ of the 100-m dash that time which was 9.4 seconds. He also long-jumped a whopping 7.56 ____. When Jesse went to Ohio State ____ he was coached by the famous track-and-field coach Larry Snyder. It was here that he came to be ____ in his familiar ____ Buckeye Bullet.It was also during his Ohio State years that he ____ 8 individual NCAA gold medals, 4 for each year in 1935 and 1936. Owens set three ____ records and tied a fourth one on May 25, 1935 during the Big Ten Track and Field Championships held that time at Ferry Field in Michigan. What was so ____ was he did the feat in less than an hour! His Big Ten record-breaking and tie wins went down sports ____ as the “Greatest 45 Minutes Ever in Sports”. To date, it has never been ____. The records he set were the following: Long Jump, 220-yard Dash and 220-yard Low Hurdles. It was during the 1936 ____ Olympic Games in Berlin that Jesse Owen’s athletic ____ shone the brightest. He became the “most successful ____ at the games” after ____ 4 gold Olympic medals in the following ____: 100 Meters, 200 Meters, Long Jump and 4 X 100 Meter Relay. The 1936 Berlin Olympics was weighed down with ____. Germany’s most infamous ____, Adolf Hitler, had just come into ____ 3 years prior to the games bringing with him his Aryan ____ and Anti-Semitic beliefs. The German ____ in the Olympics was comprised of pale blue-eyed blondes, the perfect Aryan specimen in the Nazi eyes. Because of international pressure, though, the Nazis allowed one athlete with ____ descent in the team — fencer Helen Meyer (though Meyer was also blond and was only half-Jewish). Hitler and his cronies wanted to showcase not just Germany’s resurgence after WWI but also ____ supremacy in the games. But while Germany won the most medals at the 11th Olympiad, Jesse Owens was clearly the “____ of the hour”. As an African-American, a man of ____ skin, he was credited with “single-handedly crushing Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy”. During the Berlin ____, Jesse Owens befriended German long jumper Luz Long (real nameCarl Ludwig Long) after Long gave him a very helpful ____ during the event. Long went on to win the ____ medal and Owens won gold. Long was the first to ____ the African-American for his win. Long died in WWII but Owens continued to ____ with his friend’s family throughout his life. Before the competitions, German shoemaker Addi Dassler visited Jesse in the Olympic ____ and convinced him to wear his hand-made ____ shoes with extra-long spikes. This was the first ____ given to a male African-American athlete. Addi Dassler was ____ of the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory. 10 years after that sponsorship, Addi went on to build ____ and his brother, Rudolf, put up Puma. During the 1936 Berlin Olympics, many ____ capitalized on Hitler’s annoyance towards Owens for winning four gold ____ despite him not being an Aryan. However, Owens insisted in interviews that Hitler never ____ him. In one of the interviews, he said that ____ “waved at him” so he did the same.

Jesse Owens

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