Last night on Zoom I met a legend. I was on a train and at seven in the evening Tommie Smith appeared on my pc screen. If you don’t know who Tommie Smith is you are missing something. Mexico 68, Olympics, in the 200-meter athletics competition Tommie Smith wins by going under twenty seconds for the first time.
He’s a big black boy, Tommie Smith, like third place, John Carlos. At the time of the national anthems the two lower their heads and raise their fist with a black glove, Smith’s right, Carlos’s left. That image became a symbol of civil rights battles, and it was an example for all sportsmen who later put their popularity in the service of a more important cause. Kneeling footballers come from that raised black fist. And so when I saw that I could book an hour with Tommie Smith, I didn’t think for a moment.
I was on Airbnb, a place you go to to find accommodation to go on vacation. Then came the pandemic and Airbnb changed the algorithm and started suggesting “experiences” to do in the city. It must have worked because this Olympics experience story became the site where meet and talk to Tokyo athletes on Zoom. How to train, how to prepare for the competition, how to win: in all disciplines, you pay ten euros and have your champion for an hour.
Basically it works like OnlyFans, the site that in the pandemic has become the tool with which many people in exchange for money showed sexy photos or videos to fans. Depressing. How Tommie Smith ended up in the Airbnb experiences, he who changed the world? I don’t know and at first I was baffled by this nearly 80-year-old man struggling to speak at a screen sitting in front of a bare wall and an anonymous curtain.
But then it was like in the 200 meters, when you start slow to fly after the curve: Tommie Smith took courage, he urged us to change the world, to believe in our dreams, he told us not to stop believing he could build a better world. I listened to him with my eyes closed as I saw him cross the finish line first. Again.
.