BETTER THAN OWENS BUT UNABLE TO GO TO BERLIN
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(SPORT—TRACK.) PEACOCK, EULACE.
Personal Archive of this great
African American Track and Field star.
Consists of over 100 gold, silver and bronze
medals contained in a large home-made case; correspondence, newspaper clippings, pro-
grams, and ephemera, his passport which he would have used to travel to Berlin for the
1936 Olympics; a few photographs, his 1932 and 1933 high school yearbooks, with copi-
ous photos and inscriptions.
MUST BE SEEN
.
Vp, vd
[10,000/15,000]
Eulace Peacock (1914-1996), often referred to as “The Fastest Man on Earth” was an
American track and field athlete of the 1930s. He was born in Dothan, Alabama, but his fam-
ily moved to New Jersey where he was raised and attended school. He was not only Jesse
Owens chief rival, but beat Owens five times in the trials running up to the Olympics. In
1935, Peacock was a sophomore at Temple University and Owens a sophomore at Ohio
State. On May 25, in a 45-minute span during the Big Ten Conference championships in
Columbus, Ohio, Owens broke five world records and equaled a sixth. Six weeks later, in the
Amateur Athletic Union national championships in Lincoln, Neb., Peacock beat Owens in the
100-meter dash (10.2 seconds, wind aided) and the long jump (26-3 to Owens’s 26-2 1/4).
Arthur Daley, covering the meet for The New York Times, called Peacock’s achievement ‘’one
of the greatest double upsets in the history of track.’’ Sadly, he injured his hamstring just before
he was supposed to leave for Germany. Peacock won the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) out-
door pentathlon championship six times, in 1934, 1935, 1937, and from 1943 through
1945. After the War, Peacock retired from Track and Field, opened a liquor store, and occasion-
ally coached local events. He is honored by several Sports organizations and was inducted into
the National Field and Track Hall of Fame. In Tony Gentry’s book “Jesse Owens,” (1990)
Peacock appears in a photograph with Owens on page 51: “Owens in July 1935 with his
friend Eulace Peacock who went on to defeat Owens five times in the next 9 months. A ham-
string injury prevented Peacock from making the 1936 U.S. team.”
