astigbet Otis Davis, Who Overcame Racism to Win Olympic Gold, Dies at 92

Otis Davis, who was not allowed to attend the University of Alabama, in his home state, because he was Black, but flourished at the University of Oregon, which became his springboard to winning two gold medals in sprints at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, died on Saturday in hospice care in North Bergen, N.J. He was 92.

His daughter Liza Davis confirmed the death.

Davis was part of a stellar American athletic contingent in Rome that included the boxer Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali), the sprinter Wilma Rudolph, the decathlete Rafer Johnson and the basketball player Oscar Robertson.

Davis did not have the star power of those athletes, but he had a compelling story.

He left the Jim Crow-era South after graduating from high school, served four years in the Air Force and received a basketball scholarship to Oregon. He was converted to a sprinter by the school’s track and field coach, Bill Bowerman, who would later found Nike with Phil Knight.

Shortly before the Olympics in Rome began, Bowerman provided a scouting report on Davis’s forthcoming men’s 400-meter race. “His job is simple to remember,” Bowerman told The Capital Journal, of Salem, Ore. “He is supposed to start fast and finish before any of the rest of them.” He added, “I think he can.”

On Sept. 6, 1960, Davis got off to a slow start in the final. Halfway through, however, he accelerated with sudden force and took the lead. But was he running too fast, putting himself in danger of tiring and being passed? His lead, which had stretched to seven yards, began to shrink in the last 100 meters. Carl Kaufmann, a Brooklyn-born runner competing for Germany, was closing in.

ImageDavis, second from left, finished first in the semifinal of the men’s 400 meters in 1960. Also competing were, from left, Manfred Kinder of Germany, Robbie Brightwell of Britain and Milkha Singh of India. Credit...Paul Popper/Popperfoto, via Getty Images

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