THE GREATEST ATHLETE NEVER KNOWN

 

                                     
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The Greatest Athlete Never Known (1Xtra) faced a challenge: how to engage the station's young audience with the tale of someone they had probably never heard of. There was a handy Olympic connection in the story of Jim Hines, the first man to run 100m in under 10 seconds, and gold medal winner at the 1968 Olympics, but the hurdle of holding impact from scratch remained.

The programme managed this by mixing the material to be attention-grabbing (it began with a sharp, musical exclamation from James Brown: "Uh!") and accessible for its listeners. So, Hines's relative obscurity was expressed thus: "Why," asked presenter Mike Costello, "does he only get a few paragraphs in Wikipedia?"

Hines's historic achievement, we heard, was eclipsed by the black power salute from teammates Tommie Smith and John Carlos on their 200m medal podium. Hines wanted nothing to do with this, then or now. But bitterness on his side was matched by disdain from Smith, who argued that Hines's failure to use the Olympics to protest against racism wiped out his sporting significance. "On a long course of events," he said, "[Hines] won't balance two dead flies in terms of his impact". Ouch.

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