“Man, I love this weather,” says Tommie Smith, gazing over a chilly, damp Manchester Ship Canal. “I just got in from Atlanta where it’s a hundred and ten. So this is fine by me.” Tommie is 74 and moves a little slower now than he did in 1968. But he’s still athletic and imposing and looks like he could cover the hundred or so yards to the water faster than anyone else in this room. Fifty years ago, he could cover it faster than anyone on earth.
Purely as a sporting event, the men’s 200-metre final on 16 October at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City was thrilling. Smith, for the US, pulled away in the last few seconds from fellow American John Carlos and Australia’s Peter Norman who ran neck-and-neck to the tape. Smith took gold in a time of 19.83 seconds – a new world record. But only Smith and sports statisticians recall that today. It’s what happened next that the world remembers.
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