Another Owens Runs in Berlin, But on Hardwood, Not Track

BERLIN -- One morning in August, an American got more attention for taking a lap around the track in Berlin's Olympic Stadium than many of his countrymen had in 70 years. He didn't run -- he walked. He wasn't even a track athlete, but a basketball player. What mattered was not how fast he went, but in whose footsteps.

The player was dressed in the branded warmup gear of ALBA Berlin, a local professional team with which he'd recently signed, and as he came around to the stadium's open end, photographers and television crews asked the 27-year-old power forward from Duncanville, Tex., to stop in front of a grand staircase leading up to a concrete plaza where, in 1936, the Olympic flame had burned before Adolf Hitler.

The cameramen were careful to line up shots with Chris Owens and these remnants of Berlin's Olympic past because it was in this stadium that his great-uncle, Jesse Owens, had won four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics.

A bit of Jesse Owens's legend had returned to Berlin.

The 1936 Games took place under the cloud of Nazism in Germany and amid political turmoil in the United States over whether to boycott the games. Owens's wins in the 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and 4x100 meter relay were viewed by many as refutations of Hitler's philosophies of Aryan supremacy, and they made Owens an icon.

The 70th anniversary of the 1936 Olympics last month passed with little commemoration in Berlin. And aside from notices of a U.S. basketball player named Chris Owens signing for Berlin's team in the sports pages, there were few stories mentioning the anniversary in the German press. That mattered little to Owens.

Speaking before practice in ALBA's home arena, Max Schmeling Halle in the former East Berlin, he explained what it meant to him to carry forward the legacy of a man he never knew. Jesse Owens, who was the uncle of his father, Rick Owens, died in 1980, not long after Chris had turned 1.

"He stands for giving your best effort and fighting for what you believe in, and excellence," Owens said.

He said he doesn't feel any added burden because he is playing basketball in the city where his great-uncle became a legend. "I just feel like I need to be the way my mom raised me to be," he said.

Any pressure to succeed? "I don't feel any extra pressure," he said. "It's not a burden, it's a privilege."

Owens has borne big expectations before. After setting the University of Texas's single season record for blocked shots as a junior, he went into his senior year in 2001-02 as a preseason all-American candidate. With his muscular 6-foot-8-inch frame and a 7.9 rebounds per game average, he was projected to go early in the NBA draft.

Then, in late December, in the 11th game of the season at Utah, he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee and missed the rest of the season.