He was hailed as the greatest sprinter ever, who humbled Hitler at Berlin’s Olympics. But a new book reveals Jesse Owens as a liar and insatiable womaniser – and the Führer as the real victor...

Deep in a stadium in the heart of Nazi Germany, six athletes readied themselves for the biggest race of their lives. None of them paid much attention to the light rain.

Instead, they looked down the 100 metres to the finish, each praying that they would be the one to breast the winning tape and take the ultimate athletic prize — an Olympic gold medal. The starter called the men to their places.

Among them was a 22-year-old African-American from Ohio who was the favourite to win. He crouched down, digging his fingers lightly into the cinders. The starter called for the men to get set. Simultaneously, the athletes raised their haunches. The 22-year-old swallowed, trying to control his breathing.

Up in the stands, as excited as any other spectator, Adolf Hitler strained forward in his seat in the box of honour, beating his right fist on the rail in front of him. The Fuhrer most certainly did not wish the favourite to win. He would be cheering on Germany’s mighty Erich Borchmeyer, every inch of his 6ft the Nordic archetype. Hitler hoped that it was impossible that an Aryan could allow himself to be beaten by a mere ‘neger’.

The pistol went off and the men launched themselves forward, their arms pumping furiously. After only 20 metres, it became clear that the favourite was going to win. ‘There was never a runner who showed so little sign of effort,’ wrote one observer.

‘He seemed to float along the track.’ The 22-year-old crossed the line in 10.3 seconds — a new world record. Much to Hitler’s chagrin, the crowd went wild. ‘Yessay-Ovens! Yessay-Ovens!’ they shouted, not seeming to mind that their homegrown hero, Borchmeyer, had come second from last.

Racist Nazi Germany forgot its prejudice for a few minutes of fanatical cheering.

The name the crowd was trying to say, of course, was that of the most famous sprinter of the 20th century — Jesse Owens. It is a name that has now become synonymous with decent sportsmanship, one that conjures up a David and Goliath-style battle in which the little man defeated the Nazis by showing the world that their racial theories were all wrong.

It is often said that Owens, by winning four gold medals, was the victor of those 1936 Olympics — the infamous Berlin Games which were held 70 years ago in the same stadium that hosted this summer’s World Cup final. In so doing, many have come to believe that he stole from the Nazis what should have been a propaganda triumph.

But having spent the past two years researching and writing a history of Berlin Games, speaking to the surviving athletes and travelling to America, Germany and Switzerland to scour Olympic archives, I have discovered that the truth about Owens is, sadly, very different. Far from being the clean-cut golden boy, Owens’ true life story encompasses hidden tales of womanising, poverty and serial deception. More than that, it also exposes a profoundly uncomfortable truth: the Berlin Games, far from striking a blow to Hitler’s pride and racist ideology, were instead a wonderful advertisement for fascism.

Owens was born as James Cleveland Owens on September 13, 1913 in Oakville, Alabama. His father Henry was a sharecropper who tilled several acres of his white landlord’s estate. Owens’ mother, Emma, gave birth to nine children, of whom Owens was the youngest. Growing up in a shack overcrowded with his siblings, Owens was not a healthy child, suffering from bronchial congestion and pneumonia.

The boy earned the name ‘Jesse’ after the family moved north to Cleveland, Ohio, in search of a better life. The legend has it that when his teacher asked for his name, Owens replied ‘J.C. Owens’ in his Southern drawl. When his teacher asked whether he had said ‘Jesse Owens’, the young boy, not wishing to contradict her, said that he had. The name stuck. It was at his junior high school that Owens was discovered to have a phenomenal athletic talent. By the time he was a teenager, Jesse was running the 100 yards in 11 seconds, an astonishingly quick time.

His coach, had to check that his stopwatch was not broken. In 1928, at the age of 15, Owens started breaking records on both the track and in the long jump pit. Over the next few years he would astonish everybody, and by 1932 he was regarded in the local papers as a ‘marvel’.

But away from the racetrack, Owens was already getting into trouble. On August 8, 1932, his childhood sweetheart, Ruth, gave birth to a baby girl, Gloria. Of course, the stigma of having a child out of wedlock at that time was considerable, and in order to allay family sensitivities, Jesse and Ruth claimed to have got married the month before.

It was the first of many lies. The couple remained unwed, and Gloria’s existence was kept secret, with only a handful of family and very close friends even aware of her existence. The next three years saw Owens’ star continue to rise, as he broke record upon record. And with it came adulation that went straight to his head.

Mobbed wherever he went, Owens earned the attention of many female fans, who were attracted not only by his physique but also by his radiant grin and utterly charming manner.

One particular fan, Quincella Nickerson, soon became a favourite. The daughter of a rich Californian businessman, Nickerson fell for Owens, and her advances were successful. Soon, the couple had embarked on a torrid affair, and were photographed wherever they went — even in a jeweller’s shop. The affair made the front pages of the national papers, which speculated when the couple might get engaged.

For the long-suffering Ruth, this was a bitter moment. She harangued Jesse, demanding that he acknowledge their relationship and secret daughter. But it was only when a journalist got wind of the story and threatened to expose Owens unless he married Ruth that the athlete relented. Owens married Ruth — this time for real — in her parents’ living-room on the evening of July 5, 1935.

If Ruth hoped that this would spell the end of his womanising, she was horribly mistaken. By the time of the Olympics the following year, Owens’ athletic ability was in peak condition, as was his allure for the opposite sex. On the SS Manhattan which took the American Olympic team to Germany, Owens charmed everybody on board — especially the women. Away from Ruth, temptation proved too much.

In the early morning of Wednesday, July 23, the American sprinter Helen Stephens went for a walk on what she thought to be an empty deck. But after a while, she became aware of giggled whispers and ‘muffled sounds’ coming from a lifeboat. Edging closer, she noticed that the canvas covering the lifeboat was moving in a suggestively rhythmic way. She stepped back into the shadows and waited.

After several minutes, a man got out of the lifeboat. It was Jesse Owens. Helen waited for him to disappear, and just as she started to leave, the other occupant of the lifeboat emerged and walked past her, even whispering ‘Good Morning’. The mystery paramour was never identified.

In Berlin, Owens soon found himself lauded by crowds wherever he went. In the stadium, the largely German crowd went wild whenever Owens appeared. It seemed that the weeks of derogatory articles about der Neger in the Nazi Press had made no impact. So when Owens won that first gold medal, for the 100 metres, the stadium erupted once more into chants of ‘Yessay-Ovens! Yessay-Ovens!’

Only one man did not share in the mood of exultation. Up in his box, Hitler was furious that Owens had won. But what happened next is intriguing. According to Olympic folklore, the dictator is said to have refused to shake hands with Owens, as he had done with every other gold-winner. Instead, he is said to have stormed out of the stadium, appalled that ‘his’ Olympics had been tainted by an untermensch — a subhuman.

The truth is quite different. Although Hitler was undoubtedly angry, he did not receive any athletes that day.

The Olympic authorities had asked him to stop doing so, as time constraints meant that it would be impossible for him to meet every victor. Rather than deny some gold medallists the ‘honour’ of meeting the Fuhrer, the Olympic fathers decided it would be best if none were singled out.

Owens, however, was to make much of the supposed snub for the rest of his life. Confident that the tale felt morally true, the athlete embroidered and embellished it countless times in his many public appearances. Jesse was also to embellish another key moment of his Olympic fortnight — the long jump. According to a myth of his own creation, Owens won the gold medal only thanks to the good sportsmanship of his German rival, Carl ‘Luz’ Long, who he claimed had advised him in the moments before the crucial jump, even placing his towel at the exact spot where Owens should jump from to ensure victory.

It certainly makes a compelling story. But once again, it is completely untrue. Not one reporter spotted Owens and Long having a conversation before the jump. Nobody saw Long place his towel — or in some accounts, make a mark — near the launching board. Crucially, not even Luz Long could recall any such conversation. The reason was simple: the story is a complete fabrication, one that was endlessly spun by Owens himself.

The tragedy is that he had no need to embellish his account of the Berlin Olympics. His athletic achievements were truly extraordinary. Owens went on to win two more gold medals during the Games, bringing his total to four. So why would he lie? And why would sports historians seize on Owens’ every word as proof that that he had single-handedly scuppered any propaganda value the Nazis hoped to achieve from the Games? Perhaps the answer lies in an uncomfortable reality for the keepers of the Olympic flame.

Because far from being a disaster for the Nazis, the Games were a propaganda triumph. Sports fans and athletes from around the world came back to their home countries reporting how fabulous the new Germany was. A reporter for the New York Times noted how the Germans, anxious to impress their visitors, had been ‘happy and amiable beyond reckoning’. As a result, ‘they are back in the fold of nations who have “arrived”.’

This was music to the ears of Goebbels, the Nazis’ propaganda minister.

And far from being humbled by Owen’s four victories, the Nazi hierarchy was too busy celebrating the German medal haul — top of the table. In fact, the fascist countries had a splendid Olympics, and triumphed over the democracies. The Germans beat the Americans. The Italians beat the French and the Japanese beat the British. The 1936 Olympics were such a successful showcase for Nazi Germany that one senior British Foreign Office official remarked how the Germans were going to make the United Kingdom look a third- rate nation.

‘These people are the most formidable proposition that has ever been formulated; they are in strict training now, not for the Olympic Games, but for breaking some other and emphatically unsporting world records . . .’ For Hitler, then, Jesse Owens was nothing more than a minor irritation in an otherwise splendid Olympics.

For Owens, alas, the legacy of the 1936 Olympics was less inspiring. The first sign that all would not be well came immediately after the Games, when along with the rest of the team, he had been invited to compete in Sweden. However, Owens decided that he needed to capitalise on his success by going back to the United States to take up some of the numerous and lucrative commercial offers he was receiving. American athletic officials were furious that Owens was putting money above sportsmanship and withdrew his amateur status, ending Owens’ career overnight. The normally mild-mannered athlete was livid: ‘A fellow desires something for himself,’ he said.

With no sporting appearances to bolster his profile, the lucrative offers that had flooded in never quite materialised. Instead, Owens was reduced to taking part in sporting stunts, like racing against racehorses. If that were not demeaning enough for the world’s fastest man, he soon found himself running a dry-cleaning business and then even working as a petrol pump attendant. Owens eventually filed for bankruptcy, a move that would not spell the end of his financial woes. In 1966, Owens was successfully prosecuted for tax evasion. But now, having hit rock bottom, his rehabilitation could begin. Owens began work as a U.S. ‘goodwill ambassador’, travelling around the world preaching the American way.

By the Seventies, the handsome star of the Thirties was partly rehabilitated; a grand old man, who made countless appearances at awards dinners and functions, telling and retelling tales of his time in Berlin, tales that grew taller on each occasion. But his health was rapidly failing, chiefly because he was a heavy smoker and in 1980, Jesse Owens died of lung cancer.

None of this should diminish Owens as the outstanding athlete of his age. His achievements during those two weeks in Berlin in 1936 were indeed spectacular.

But much as he — and we — might wish it otherwise, his great victories did not humble Nazi Germany. The sinister reality is that the true winner of the 1936 Olympics was Adolf Hitler.