ok ok ... it's long ... but worth the read !! This is the first of our new regular series From the Vault. We've been delving around all those filing cabinets in the basement to bring you classic sports writing recording events that happened in this week through the newspaper's history. First up is this outstanding obituary of Jesse Owens, published on April 1 1980, a day after Owens died. It was written by Chris Brasher, a gold medalist in the 3,000 metres at the 1956 Olympics, and the pace-setter for Roger Bannister's four-minute mile. Brasher was sports editor of The Observer between 1957 and 1961. And then click here for a gallery of Owens' remarkable careerJesse Owens, the greatest sprinter ever born, was taken into hospital just after Christmas and died last Monday of cancer. He is a hero of my youth, a man of many legends, most of which centre around the Berlin Olympics of 1936 when, supposedly, he was snubbed by Hitler. But that is legend, not truth. Jesse was unaware of Hitler's presence in the stadium and knew nothing of the alleged incident until he was phoned for comment by an American news agency when he was competing in Cologne after the Games.In 1962, on my way home from the Commonwealth Games in Perth I stopped in Chicago to meet this legendary athlete and to record his own story. For two or three days I stayed in the Chicago Sheraton, making forays across the icy street to the newspaper offices to burrow through the files, and in the afternoon, after his midday radio programme, Jesse would come and talk, for hours, into my old-fashioned tape recorder.I remember that late one afternoon we were thirsty and hungry and I rang room service for some beer and sandwiches. There was a knock on the door and the white waiter came in with his tray and saw a black man reclining deep in an arm-chair in a guest's room and a look of fury came over the waiter's face.I thought he would turn and leave us thirsty and hungry, but he looked again and a great smile came across his face and he said: "Mr Owens, what a privilege it is to have you in our hotel." It was the height of the Kennedy brothers' campaign to integrate America.So here now is the true Jesse Owens, told in his own words.Of the first thing that he remembers in his life: "I must have been about four at the time. I remember my father coming back from the year's reckoning with the landowner. My father was a share cropper in the cotton fields of Alabama. It was near Christmas time. The whole family had worked throughout the year in the cotton fields and my father came back and said that his share had come to nothing."And as he told this to my mother I can still see her standing by the bed folding the meagre scraps of clothing that were all we has, and she was crying because there was nothing for the children, nothing for the family, nothing for all the year's labour. I can remember many days of hunger, days where there was not enough clothing to cover our bodies - days of embarrassment."Those were the days when Jesse had no name - just the initials J.C. after his father James Cleveland Owens. James, his father, was 6ft 2in tall; his mother, Emma, was just 4ft 2in. Jesses said: "She was the balance wheel of the household; everyone obeyed her." It was a family of 11 children of whom three died in childhood. Jesse was one from the end and he got his name when the family moved north to Cleveland, Ohio, where schooling was compulsory and Jesse, then aged seven, was asked for his name: "J.C. Owens I said and she repeated: "Jesse Owens" and I said: "No, J.C. Owens" and she said "Oh, Jesse Owens?" so I said: "Yes" and from that point on I have been Jesse."After school Jesse worked in a shoe shine and repair shop and his only ambition was to own such a shop when he grew up. It is about the only ambition he never fulfilled. He might never have become the greatest sprinter the world has ever seen had it not been for a tall, gaunt, middle-aged Irish immigrant, Charles Riley, who was the physical education instructor at the nearby High School.It was not Jesse's natural ability that impresses Riley. He had seen many schoolboys who could run as fast but "... he was a boy who yearned for every bit of instruction I could give him, and he was always the last to quit practice in the evening."Jesse said that Riley taught him to run as if he had a glass of water on his head: "He always taught us that the floor is like a hot brick so if you leave your feet on the ground for too long you are going to get burnt. Everything had to be light, just a touch, and then up, up, up."When the depression came my father was thrown out of work but I still kept my job at the shoe shine parlour. Every evening after training on the school track I would walk four miles to the parlour and four miles back."When he was still a high school boy he equalled the world record for the 100 yards at the National Interscholastic Meet in Chicago in 1933. Twenty-eight American universities then sought his services: "As far as I was concerned it all depended on whether they could find me a job. I wasn't looking for books or tuition or charity. I was looking for a job, and that is what I got at Ohio State University."I operated the elevator in the Ohio House of Representatives. I had my first class at eight in the morning and I stayed at college until ten minutes to three, then I rushed down to the stadium to work out until ten minutes to four. I got dressed and went to the library and picked out the books I needed to study my subject matter the next day. Then I went to work in the elevator."On Saturday 25 May 1935 when he was still at Ohio State he ran in an inter-college meet. That date became the most incredible date in athletics history. "I wasn't feeling at all good, my back hurt from falling downstairs after a rag two weeks before. My coach suggested that I should scratch rather than do any further damage to my back. But I said let me do the 100 and maybe I'll snap out of it."Fortunately it was a warm day and the red pepper rub that my trainer had put on my spine made me really hot. When they called me up for the 100 yards dash I pulled myself up and one of our boys helped me get my sweatsuit off. When the starter called 'get set' I'll bet it took me ten seconds to get on my mark - that back hurt so. Then came the gun and my back didn't bother me again all afternoon."That run equalled the world record of 9.4 seconds. Ten minutes later he made one long jump and cleared 26ft 8.25in, breaking the world record by more than half-a-foot. It was 25 years before anyone broke that record. Nine minutes later he slashed three-tenths of a second from the world 220 yards record and 26 minutes later he ran the 220 yard hurdles for his fourth world record of the day. He said: "It's just one of the mysteries of life. I can't explain it. My coach couldn't explain it. That morning I couldn't get off the davenport in the hotel lobby."Naturally we talked about the Berlin Olympics of 1936. He said: "It was the final of the 100 metres that was the most nerve-wracking. You see, you come through months of training and you come now to the point where you have six men in the final and these six men represent the fastest human beings in the world. Now you begin to realise that out of it is going to come only one winner. He is everything - nobody else matters. The loser, and there are five of them, is just another fellow."The gun goes off and you run this race according to the way you've planned it in your mind - evenly and in front. And I was in front and then I had a lapse of memory. I forgot what I was trying to do and I thought instead in terms of an Olympic record. But records are not made that way, I tightened up and out of the corner of my eye I could feel the field coming up and then just like a flash it all came back. Charles Riley's words: relax, relax. And the arms begin to move freely again and it's all looseness and you hit the tape and then all the jubilation and all the pressures and everything is gone."It was the first of his four gold medals. Afterwards he led a chequered life, allowing himself, because he was a simple man, to be used as a symbol - by Jimmy Hoffa, the crooked union boss, by Ford Motor Co., by successive American Presidents.But he regretted none of it: "I've had all the things that any poor person would ever want in life; the affection of my people, the affection of a nation, a good reputation. And I've enjoyed accolades and privileges that come to a person who becomes a champion. This has fulfilled all the dreams that I've ever had as a boy in the cotton fields of Alabama when those injustices were done to my family. I have lived to see people from all parts of the world come to talk to my mother and father."My mother and my father - people without education and yet they still enjoyed all of these things."

Four WR's in under 30 minutes? I never knew that at all, incredible. Thanks for that...

truly a great man. the best thing was the in-your-face winning of 4 gold medals by a black man in hitler's racist germany.

Great read.

Summarise? CIARAN SUMMERISE?

"Once upon a f***ing time, the f***ing end"

Thanks for posting-definitely a worthwhile read.

4'2" and 11 kids?

*beer*

Thanks for sharing, it's indeed long but no doubt worth reading.