Where Zidane demeaned his sport, sport demeaned Owens In this month of head-butting footballers and cheating cyclists, of lying baseballers and drug-taking sprinters, a more haunting anniversary rises up. Beyond Zinédine Zidane and the expelled Tour de France favourites, and far above Barry Bonds being charged with perjury or Dwain Chambers' limping return, here comes Jesse Owens again.
Seventy years ago today, in Cabin 87 on Deck D of the SS Manhattan, Owens surged across the vast ocean towards Nazi Germany and the 1936 Olympic Games. In his slim pocket diary, with the words "Travels Abroad" printed in gold on the cover, he wrote of his sixth day at sea: "July 20 was very uninteresting. There wasn't much going on and most of the day was spent in my cabin . . . I read the letter I received from my wife Ruth again. Kissed her picture and went to bed."
Owens was down in third class while the team officials cruised up above in first. The 22-year-old "Negro sensation" did not care. He was closing in on glory in Berlin - at the very stadium where Zidane and Marco Materazzi have just played out their own iconic but ultimately desolate ideological drama. Once the shock of the head-butt eased, I reached for those contrastingly innocent pages from Owens' diary which his wife, Ruth, had read to me in the Chicago apartment where she died in 2001 at the age of 86. As much as I had loved Zidane as a footballer and admired him as a man, it seemed strangely discomfiting to compare him, in all his riveting infamy that night, to the naive but even more gifted Owens. The compulsion grew as I checked the exact date when Ruth Owens and I had pored over the diary of her "young and beautiful husband". The symmetry was not quite perfect: I met Ruth on July 11 2000. If it had been July 9, the date of the World Cup final, I would have promptly held a seance and called up the ghosts of Jesse and Ruth - while keeping the devil at bay by replaying Zizou's butt on an endless loop.
On July 23 1936 the SS Manhattan reached Germany. Owens, who had just won the boat's Best Dressed Man award, sauntered off in his straw boater and light-blue pinstripe suit. His reaction to Nazi Germany, ironically, echoed the positive response many visitors voiced during this year's World Cup. "I like the Germans very much," he wrote. "They are friendly and keen to show a positive side to their country."
Nazi reports attributed his brilliance to "animal qualities". Some newspapers printed a photograph of an ape alongside Owens. He was more startled to be greeted with fawning politeness by the Hitler Youth. They looked like boy scouts - until they snapped to attention, lifted their stiff right arms and barked: "Heil Hitler!" Dave Albritton, Owens' closest friend, simply shivered and said: "Boy, ain't that some kind of hello?"
Yet it is the goodbye, the tragic demise of Owens, which we should also remember in the coming weeks when his Olympic heroics are relived as the supposedly purest antidote to crazed nationalism as well as the tawdry cynicism of modern sport. Despite his historic four gold medals in Berlin he was banned for life from athletics in August 1936. He was branded a "professional" by his own Olympic association and never ran or jumped again in a legitimate event. His "crime" had been to welcome the interest of film producers and talkshow hosts in his remarkable story. "He already sounds professional," sneered Avery Brundage, the president of the American Athletic It is the demise of Owens we should remember. He was reduced to racing horses, dogs, trains and buses Union, as if it was a word which spoke of a greater evil than Nazism.
On December 26 1936 Owens finally raced again. At half-time of a drab football match in Havana he faced a Cuban bruiser called Julio McCaw. He was no ordinary horse. They called Julio McCaw a thoroughbred. The world's fastest man was given a 40-yard start - which was enough for him to win. Over the next five years he was reduced to racing horses, dogs, trains and buses.
Nine months before I met Ruth Owens, Ben Johnson, an Olympic 100m champion banned for blatant cheating rather than racist reasons, repeated the stunt. In October 1999, in Charlottetown, Johnson raced two horses and a stock car. The horses, Wind-song and Fast 'n' Flashy, beat him into third place. We can forget Johnson but in this steaming month of disrepute and disillusion we should remember Jesse Owens most of all. "They never banned Jesse for cheating," Ruth Owens said. "They just cheated him. I don't like thinking about it. I prefer to remember him happy in Berlin."
America backs the right horse in contrasting tales of highs and lows
The tangled legacy of disgraced athletes and racehorses has taken a more curious turn in America. While Major League Baseball steels itself for the possible indictment of its home run slugger, Barry Bonds, in an imminent federal grand jury ruling, much of America has turned instead to the poignant story of Barbaro. The runaway winner of this year's Kentucky Derby was odds-on to replicate that achievement on May 20 the Preakness Stakes, the second leg America's triple crown, when he fractured three bones in his right hind ankle just after the race began. Apart from immediately ending the unbeaten career of a great horse, Barbaro's survival has since hung in the balance. In an epic saga, replete with hope and heartbreak, Barbaro's condition has swung from"serious but stable" to "critical" and back again. Both his rear legs are now in casts and the battle to save him continues. In a country convinced of Bonds' chemically-enhanced guilt - with his current tally of 721 home runs just 34 short of Hank Aaron's all-time record - the fate of Barbaro is suddenly more captivating. And like America, for once, I'm with the horse.
BBC's cheap tricks on tail of Murdoch's shadow
Even as someone who sold out years ago to the great Lucifer in the Sky, and coughs up monthly for the dubious privilege of having 999 television channels, it's still irritating to see how the BBC advertise their sports coverage on the main 10 o'clock news before relegating it to their digital offshoots. They can be excused this week of paying more attention to matters of far greater significance in Lebanon and Israel. Yet the way in which they trailed a story that the England captain Andrew Strauss might miss the next Test against Pakistan through injury and then ended the broadcast by encouraging viewers to switch over to their digital stations for the actual report echoed a familiar pattern. Sport has long been vital in winning new subscribers to digital television and perhaps the BBC have decided they might as well chase the long shadow of Rupert Murdoch.
Take it easy, Inzy, and have yourself a hot one
It's easier to revel in the most amiable and accomplished sporting story of the week. The Pakistan cricket captain Inzamam-ul-Haq's incredible run of scores - his wonderfully serene 56 not out at Lord's on Monday was his ninth consecutive half-century against England - continues in outrageously comfortable style. Having heard Ernie Els reject his nickname so clearly, it's obvious that "The Big Easy" should from now on be applied only to the magnificent Inzamam. And here's hoping that Inzy finally rewards himself with one of those "hot and heavy curries" he so loves.
