A Forgotten Hero - Uli Schmetzer

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Sunday June 17, 2012 13:28 by uli schmetzer

When two Americans raised their fists in the Black Power salute in 1968 no one paid much attention to the third man.

When two Americans raised their fists in the Black Power salute in 1968 no one paid much attention to the third man. After all he had not raised his own fist though pinned to his chest was a button demanding equal rights for all mankind no matter what their color or creed. The button-badge would become the cross Peter Norman carried for the rest of his life.

His country, Australia, neither redeemed him nor officially recognized he had not acted against the spirit but in the spirit of the Olympic Games. Australia’s greatest sprinter was never allowed to run in another Olympics. The ultra-conservative Australian society and its complacent media saw Norman not as a fighter for civil rights but as ‘a troublemaker who sided with the villains who desecrated the Olympic flag.’

The grudge of a pompous Australian establishment was such that thirty two years after his gesture of solidarity at the Mexican Olympics Peter Norman became the only Australian Olympic medal winner not invited as official guest to the Sydney Olympics of 2000.

Peter Norman would have been 70 years old this month, just a few weeks before another Olympic Games, this time in London, will rivet the sporting world and cast the limelight on past champions, those, unlike Norman, who were never forgotten......


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Uli Schmetzer was foreign correspondent for Reuters and the Chicago Tribune for 37 years. He is the author of ‘Times of Terror’ ‘Gaza,’
‘The Chinese Juggernaut’ and ‘The Lama’s Lover’ (to be released in July 2012.) All are available in print and digital version on www.Amazon.com