Local sporting hero Peter Norman to be honoured with Moreland Council tribute 50 years after stance

OLYMPIAN Peter Norman will be honoured with a Moreland Council tribute to mark 50 years since he took part in a famous stance against racism on the podium.

Peter Norman with the silver medal he won at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games.

A LOCAL sporting giant will be honoured on the 50th anniversary of one of the most memorable moments in Olympic history.

Former Brunswick resident Peter Norman will have a sign erected in his honour by Moreland Council as a tribute to a career that saw highs and devastating lows, following his anti-racism stance in 1968.

After running second in the 200m sprint in an Australian record time that still stands, Norman was made aware of a planned protest by United States sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos on behalf of African-Americans.

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Norman joined the two in donning a badge for the Olympic Project for Human Rights and after Carlos left his gloves behind in the athlete’s village, it was Norman who suggested he share Smith’s pair.

Peter Norman (left) during the famous 1968 Olympic medal ceremony, with Tommie Smith and John Carlos.

The sprinter was chastised when he returned home, with the Australian Parliament making a posthumous apology in 2012 for his treatment.

Norman lived in Brunswick in the late 1970s, before taking up an apprenticeship at a Lygon St butcher in Brunswick East and eventually teaching at Coburg Technical School.

He also coached and played for the West Brunswick Football Club following his retirement after controversially being overlooked for selection for the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Despite Norman running a qualifying time, he was not sent to the Games. It was the first Games that Australia was not represented by a male sprinter.

The snub stemmed back to that moment in Mexico four years earlier, as Norman told his biographer, Damian Johnstone.

“The fact that I’d, would you say, misbehaved at my previous Olympics, gave the selectors a good reason to leave me home,” Norman told Mr Johnstone for his book, A Race To Remember: The Peter Norman Story. The unofficial barring of Norman continued through to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where he was “essentially ignored” by the organisers, according to Mr Johnstone.

“He was, however, treated as an Olympic hero by numerous US African-American athletes, including Olympic legends Michael Johnson and Edwin Moses, and US officials who never forgot the support Peter gave,” Mr Johnstone said.

The council voted unanimously at last week’s meeting in favour of the tribute, with North East Ward councillor Sue Bolton praising the athlete.

“I think it is fitting that Moreland makes some sort of acknowledgment of Peter’s record in the municipality,” she said.

Norman died after a heart attack in 2006, with both Smith and Carlos pall bearers at his funeral. The US Track and Field Federation declared the day of his funeral as Peter Norman Day.

The sign is due to be unveiled in October.