(07-02-2014 11:05 PM)DaSaintFan Wrote:  Jesse Owens, hands down...

What I like about this choice is Jesse won four gold medals during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin during Adolf Hitler's reign with Nazi Germany. While Germany finished these olympics with the highest gold medals and most medals overall (the US finished second in both respectively), Hitler was convinced that his Aryan nation was supreme athletically and would dominate the games. Jesse helped to take care of that myth.

Quote:Albert Speer wrote that Hitler “was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.”

The biggest travesty of all may have been the following:

Quote:Owens said, "Hitler didn't snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." Hitler sent Owens a commemorative inscribed cabinet photograph of himself. Honors were not bestowed upon Jesse Owens by either President Franklin D. Roosevelt or his successor Harry S. Truman during their terms. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (himself an athlete of note) honored Owens by naming him an "Ambassador of Sports."

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