Satish Sekar

Samuel Matete is without doubt the best athlete that Zambia has ever produced. He benefited from state-of-the-art facilities after leaving Zambia for the USA. Matete is back in Zambia. He wants to develop Zambian athletes and help to produce his successor as Zambia’s best. Matete’s Olympic time was not his best and is now the equal 188th fastest in the event, but that was inevitable as athletes get better facilities and technology improves – tracks are designed to produce faster times. Tokyo’s second Olympic Games had such a track.

Ponga Liwewe, son of Zambia’s greatest commentator, Dennis, is a distinguished football journalist and administrator in his own right. Ponga did not choose footballers as his greatest Olympian, Zambian or international. Zambia’s greatest athlete Samuel Matete was his greatest Zambian Olympian and his choice as greatest ever is Jamaican athletics icon Usain Bolt, undoubtedly one of the sport’s greats.

Sixty years earlier Jesse Owens overcame horrific racism home and abroad to enter Olympic history. His talent and achievements made a mockery of the Third Reich’s claim to be the Master-Race, but he and his black teammates (18 of them) faced appalling racism in the USA too. President Franklin Roosevelt refused to congratulate Owens or other black medal winners despite their great sporting displays, and they discriminated against American Jewish athletes too.

One of the greatest Olympians of all time, American swimmer Mark Spitz was Jewish. After his magnificent haul of seven gold medals in Munich’s Olympic Games of 1972 Spitz had to leave early after fears for his safety following the infamous Black September group that murdered eleven Israeli athletes.