Aussie Sprinter Peter Norman Dies at 64

Mexico City, 1968, was a different kind of Olympic Games. Rather than an outburst of civic and national pride, the games were a pressure cooker. The Mexican authorities shot dead 25 student protesters (by official count, others say 350) just before the opening ceremonies. North of the border, there was an unpopular war aggravated by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. So looking back it’s no surprise that, on the medal stand, the winner and third place finisher in the men’s 200 meter race raised a “black power” salute during the “Star Spangled Banner.” Earlier this week, Peter Norman died, the Aussie who finished second and who didn’t have to pick a side in the racial politics of the times – but did anyway.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the two black Americans whose images are well-known even if their names aren’t, have been criticized and idolized for their actions that October night. The rights and wrongs of the salute still get the blood flowing among Americans old enough to remember it, and who remember what America was like in 1968. But no one remembers the guy with the silver medal, who stood respectfully through the American anthem with his Australian tan, a man who broke the world record in the preliminaries to make it to the final.

From a country where the aboriginal Australians didn’t get the vote until 1962 and weren’t counted in the census until 1967, Mr. Norman could easily have said it wasn’t his fight. Civil rights in America weren’t really any of his business, he could have said. Yet, he told Washington Post reporter Mike Wise many years later, “I couldn’t see why a black man wasn’t allowed to drink out of the same water fountain or sit in the same bus or go to the same schools as a white guy. That was just social injustice that I couldn’t do anything about from where I was, but I certainly abhorred it.”

Messrs. Smith and Carlos were preparing for the ceremony and didn’t try to hide what they were doing from Mr. Norman. He said, “Tommie and John were talking about what they were going to do. They involved me in the conversation. It wasn’t as if they were having a secret huddle. They were letting me know.” Part of their plan was to wear an “Olympic Project for Human Rights” badge over their hearts. The Aussie asked if he could have one. “If I get you one, will you wear it?” Mr. Carlos asked. “I sure would,” Mr. Norman told him.

Actions have consequences, of course, good and bad. The white antipodean runner and the two black “trouble-makers” became very close. Mr. Carlos said upon hearing of Mr. Norman’s death, “Peter was a piece of my life. When I got the call, it knocked the wind out of me. I was his brother. He was my brother.” On returning to Australia, Mr. Norman wasn’t very popular. Mr. Carlos explained, “Peter had a bigger cross to bear because he didn't have anyone there to help shield him other than his family. He had to go through agony and torment. He took it like a soldier.” He got a reprimand from the Aussie Olympic bigshots and gallons of hostile ink in the press. During the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, he remained unwanted by the host committee as a commentator.

Mr. Wise, in his piece on Mr. Norman, comes across as incredulous at this. However, he noted that there were parts of Australia that backed Mr. Norman. “You had to take a train through a downtown Aboriginal community before a large photo of the 1968 medal ceremony emerged, plastered on the side of a house, under the words, ‘Three Proud Men’.” Not two, three.

For a great many athletes, breaking a world record is the ultimate. For Mr. Norman, it wasn’t. His finest moment happened while standing still. He did what he thought was right and took the heat for it. If Hemingway’s definition of courage holds up, if it really is “grace under pressure,” Peter Norman had grace in truckloads because he decided it was his fight, too.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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