The Question That Changes History
to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany
Of all days — Christmas or any other day — why should Sam Stoller matter to you?
I can only imagine the differences between his travels to the Olympics Games and mine. For me, an eight-hour chartered airplane flight with motivational films and pillow fights.
His? Eight days on a boat to Hamburg. Then a train to Berlin. Finally, a bus ride to the Olympic Village. I suppose it’s on this last leg of a tiresome journey where reality set in.
As the bus drove down the impeccably clean boulevard, out his window he sees two flags, duplicated as far as his weary eyes can reach. One flag bears the Olympic Rings. The other? Swastikas.
Sam Stoller, along with Marty Glickman, were two Jewish athletes set to run the 4x100 meter relay with their U.S. teammates at the 1936 Olympics Games.
Those Olympic Games.
On the morning of the event, the leadership of the U.S. Olympic Team pulled Stoller and Glickman out of the relay — in a pivotal moment in history, the very leaders the athletes trusted to stand up for them went weak.
The U.S. Team replaced Stoller and Glickman with two African American athletes: Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. Despite vocal disagreement from Owens, the decision stood.
An Olympic Gold Medal by Stoller and Glickman won on that track at those Olympic Games would have been heroic. Such a performance was well within reach — speed and preparation were on their side. It was a heroic opportunity fairly earned, unjustly denied.
The Owens and Metcalfe team went on to win the Olympic Gold Medal.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” - Steve Jobs
The life trajectories of the four athletes, following the Berlin Olympic Games, are worth a closer look. Olympic fame for Owens, a New York City sports broadcasting career for Glickman, and United States Congressional service for Metcalfe.
Stoller? He tried and failed at acting, married three times, divorced twice, and eventually wound up in the Washington, DC area selling advertising for a radio station.
Coming from the sport of canoeing, I don’t love Halls of Fame. Our sport has enough challenges to bring a single person into it. I believe time, energy, and resources are better spent giving back to our sport than receiving recognition. Canoeing recognition takes care of itself in the form of stories around a campfire.
But, about 25 years ago, I did accept a nomination to the Washington, DC Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Why? There were plenty of broadcasters, agents, team doctors, and executives, but very few athletes.
So when the same organization asked me, last month, to receive Stoller’s posthumous induction on his behalf, I accepted the opportunity to share the story of this great athlete.
For a few weeks prior to the induction ceremony, I put myself in Stoller’s shoes. Instead of connecting the dots of my own past, I borrowed Stoller’s dots. It was painful and sad but an important introspection. I found myself reaching out to my friends and family — to appreciate them a little more.
The Hall of Fame organizers had told me that Sam would have no friends nor family at the induction ceremony. One question gnawed at me: “For whom is this recognition?”
In stillness, I found the answer.
It is for you.
My role in the Hall of Fame ceremony was to transfer the accomplishment of an Olympian — one from those Olympic Games — to you.
So I come back to the question: Why should Sam Stoller matter to you?
Because every day, there is a contrast between you and someone who is narrowly missing a shot at becoming a hero. What if you narrowed that contrast? By even just 1%. Do a little more to open the hero’s path to another?
On a summer morning in 1936, the leadership of the U.S. Olympic Team failed to ask itself these questions. For years leading up to those Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee failed to ask itself these questions.
But, we can. Here’s how I answer these questions.
With gratitude,
Joe
PS — My ability to connect dots through Sam Stoller’s past would not have happened without the present knowledge, friendship, and spirit of Olympic Champion, Norm Bellingham. Thank you, Norm!
Connect with Joe:
Joe Jacobi is an Olympic Gold Medalist and Performance Coach who collaborates with leaders & teams by getting them outside the day-to-day rush of life and bringing focus to what truly matters most.
His strategies and concepts help clients, including sales and technology executives, doctors, senior-level bankers, and military leaders, to perform their best without compromising their lives.
Joe continually practices and refines his core principles and strategies via his own life and pursuits at his Pyrenees mountains home beside the 1992 Olympic Canoeing venue in La Seu d’Urgell in the Spanish state of Catalunya — the same canoeing venue where along with his canoeing partner, Scott Strausbaugh, Joe won America’s first-ever Olympic Gold Medal in the sport of Whitewater Canoe Slalom at the 1992 Olympic Games.
