August 9

Today is August 9, 2011 and it's my 16th birthday. I am currently spending my last summer as a camper in Maine, and today was the culmination of our Olympic games. Senior camp is divided into two teams, the greens and the greys. There are many different kinds of sporting activities that occur during the four day competition, with the last event being the wacked-up-relay. The final event in the relay, which usually decides the entire Olympics, is the pie-eating contest. Today was the closest Olympics in my eight years at camp, and fortunately, MY TEAM WON!

Exactly 75 years ago today on August 9, 1936, Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal in track and field at the Games of the XI Olympiad in Berlin, Germany. He became the first American to win four gold medals in one Olympiad. Owens was the most successful athlete at the games, and the victory was noteworthy as Adolf Hitler had intended the 1936 games to showcase “Aryan racial superiority.” Hitler was upset with the success of Jesse Owens, and wanted to ban Africans from partaking in future games.

On the world stage, the Olympics can bring people together from all different backgrounds and unite them in competition.

At camp, Olympics create a bond amongst the campers. Tomorrow, it will not matter if you were on the green team or the grey team because the memories will bind everyone who competed together.