Peter Norman: The White Athlete Who Stood With Smith and Carlos

Originally published 2017-10-17.

The third man in the most famous photograph of the 1968 Olympics is Peter Norman, an Australian sprinter who won silver in the 200 metres in Mexico City. On 16 October 1968, while Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists during the American anthem, Norman stood one step below them wearing a badge of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. He chose to wear it, he understood what it meant, and he never took it back.

For years many viewers saw him as a bystander, or even as a stiff contrast to the protest behind him. The opposite is closer to the truth. Here is how he came to be on that podium, what the badge stood for, what happened to his career afterwards, and how Australia finally recognised him.

Who was Peter Norman?

Norman was born on 15 June 1942 in Coburg, a suburb of Melbourne, and grew up in a devout Salvation Army family. He trained as an apprentice butcher before becoming a teacher, and he ran for Victoria and Australia through the 1960s. Compact and quick, he was noticeably shorter than the two Americans who flanked him in Mexico City, and almost nobody tipped him for a medal.

His upbringing shaped what happened next. According to Carlos, the Americans asked him before the ceremony whether he believed in human rights and whether he believed in God. Norman answered yes to both, and the conversation ended with him promising to stand with them in spirit as well as on the podium.

The race: a surprise silver and a record that lasted 56 years

Norman improved with every round. He won his heat in 20.17 seconds, briefly an Olympic record, then won his quarter-final and placed second in his semi-final. In the final, Smith pulled clear to win in a world-record 19.83. Norman finished fast and caught Carlos right on the line, taking silver in 20.06 to Carlos's 20.10.

That 20.06 became one of the most durable marks in Australian sport. It stood as the national and Oceania record for more than half a century, until the teenage sprinter Gout Gout ran 20.02 in Ostrava, Czech Republic, in June 2025. Older stories that describe Norman's time as the current record were right when they were written, but they are now out of date.

What happened on the podium

Smith and Carlos were supporters of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), a movement of athletes and activists that used the Games to draw attention to racism in the United States and in world sport. They planned a silent protest for the medal ceremony, and every detail carried a meaning.

• No shoes, black socks: a sign of the poverty facing many Black Americans.
• Smith's black scarf: Black pride.
• Carlos's open tracksuit top: solidarity with blue-collar workers.
• Carlos's beads: a memorial to people who were lynched or who died on slave ships.
• The raised fists: Smith later called his gesture a human rights salute, although it is usually remembered as the Black Power salute.

The gloves nearly did not happen. Carlos had left his pair at the Olympic Village. It was Norman who proposed that the two men share Smith's pair, one glove each, which is why Smith raises his right fist in the photograph and Carlos his left.

Norman wanted to show his own support. A white American rower, Paul Hoffman, was wearing an OPHR badge, and when Norman asked whether there was one for him, Hoffman handed over his own. Norman pinned it to his green tracksuit beside the Australian coat of arms. The badge above is the same design: a small round emblem that, in that setting, said clearly where its wearer stood. The photograph, taken by John Dominis, shows Norman looking straight ahead, still and composed, a calm figure in front of the two raised fists.

The price the three men paid

The International Olympic Committee president, Avery Brundage, regarded the protest as a domestic political statement that had no place at the Games. He ordered Smith and Carlos suspended and banned from the Olympic Village, and when the US Olympic Committee resisted he threatened to send home the entire American track team. Both sprinters left Mexico early and faced hostility and threats back home. Smith later played briefly in the NFL and taught physical education at Oberlin College; Carlos tried professional football, went through hard years, then worked with the organising committee of the 1984 Los Angeles Games and became a high school track coach and counsellor.

Norman's treatment was quieter, and parts of it are still argued over. He kept running well, winning the 200 metres at the 1969 Pacific Conference Games in Tokyo and competing at the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. He was not picked for Munich in 1972.

Supporters point out that he ran qualifying times many times between 1969 and 1971. The Australian Olympic Committee has always said the decision was about form: Norman finished third at the 1972 national championships in 21.6 seconds, behind Greg Lewis and Gary Eddy, and selection required a creditable showing at the trials as well as a qualifying time. Both facts are true, and accounts that mention only one of them should be read with care.

After athletics he played Australian rules football for West Brunswick, taught, and later worked in sports administration. In 1985 he tore an Achilles tendon in a charity race; gangrene set in and he came close to losing his leg. Depression, heavy drinking and a dependence on painkillers followed. Carlos put the contrast simply when he said that Peter was facing an entire country and suffering alone.

The Sydney 2000 Olympics added another sore point. Norman was not part of the official Australian celebrations. The committee says it could not afford to host every former Olympian and offered him tickets on the same terms as others. When the American team heard he had not been included, it invited him to join its own group during the Games.

Norman with Smith and Carlos in 1968. What began as a brief conversation before a medal ceremony became a friendship that lasted the rest of Norman's life.

A friendship to the end

Norman died of a heart attack in Melbourne on 3 October 2006, aged 64. At his funeral on 9 October, Smith and Carlos gave eulogies and carried his coffin. USA Track & Field declared that day Peter Norman Day, a gesture from another country's athletics body that his own country had not yet matched.

Tommie Smith, left, and John Carlos, right, as pallbearers at Norman's funeral in Melbourne in October 2006.

Norman explained his choice in his own words in Salute, the 2008 documentary written, directed and produced by his nephew, Matt Norman. He talked about the segregation he had read about in America, the separate buses, schools and drinking fountains, and how powerless he felt to change it from Australia: There was a social injustice that I couldn't do anything about from where I was, but I certainly hated it. Some people told him the protest had overshadowed his silver medal. He disagreed, and said: I have to confess, I was rather proud to be part of it.

Statues, an apology and a medal

In 2005 San Jose State University, where Smith and Carlos had studied, unveiled the 22-foot Victory Salute statue by the artist Rigo 23. The second step of the podium is empty. That was not a snub: Norman asked for his place to be left open so that visitors could stand there themselves and take their own stand against racism, and he was invited to speak at the unveiling.

The Victory Salute statue at San Jose State University. The empty silver-medal step was Norman's own idea.

Official recognition in Australia came slowly. On 11 October 2012 the House of Representatives passed a motion, moved by the Labor MP Andrew Leigh, that recognised Norman's athletic achievement and his courage in wearing the badge, and apologised for the way he was treated after 1968. An earlier draft also apologised for his omission from the Munich team, but that line was dropped from the final version, a sign of how contested the selection question still was.

In 2018 the Australian Olympic Committee awarded him its Order of Merit posthumously, and its president, John Coates, admitted the committee had been negligent in failing to recognise his role. A statue including Norman on the podium was unveiled at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington in 2016, and a bronze statue of Norman himself was unveiled at the athletics track in Albert Park, Melbourne, on 9 October 2019, the anniversary of his funeral. He is also in the Sport Australia and Athletics Australia halls of fame.

Common myths about the photo

• Myth: Norman was a passive or disapproving onlooker. He knew about the protest in advance, wore a protest badge and suggested the shared gloves.
• Myth: the statue at San Jose left him out against his will. The empty step was his request.
• Myth: he was banned from Munich purely as punishment. That is how many supporters see it, but the AOC points to his third place at the 1972 trials, and the record supports a more complicated reading.
• Myth: the medals were taken away. Smith and Carlos were expelled from the Games, but the IOC did not force them to return their medals.
• Myth: Norman's 20.06 is still the Australian record. It was for 56 years, until Gout Gout's 20.02 in 2025.

Why Norman still matters

Norman's part in 1968 was small in movement and large in meaning. He did not raise a fist, give a speech or plan the protest. He simply decided, within minutes, that he would not stand apart from two men asking for equal rights, and he lived with the consequences without complaint. His story is a reminder that solidarity is not only the work of the people most affected by an injustice. Sometimes it is a quiet choice made by someone who could easily have looked away. Next time you see the photograph, look at the man in front. He belongs in the picture.

Sources: Based on an essay by Riccardo Gazzaniga first published in English by Griot Magazine, itself inspired by Gianni Mura in La Repubblica; facts checked against Wikipedia on Peter Norman, the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute and Gout Gout; documentary Salute by Matt Norman. Main photo by John Dominis.