How many of us have at some time been accused of something that we haven’t done?
Depending on what we have been accused off the wound of that accusation can cut deeply. Imagine if you had to live with that false accusation in public for 45 years.
Many people will recall the episode of Seinfeld from 1995 entitled “The Hot Tub.” In this episode Elaine has a runner from Trinidad and Tobago named Jean-Paul stay at her apartment. He is in town for the New York City Marathon. So the story goes Jean-Paul overslept and missed the Marathon at the last Olympic Games, and Jerry obsesses with ensuring that it doesn’t happen again. All kinds of mayhem results in trying to ensure that Jean-Paul does not miss the start of the New York Marathon.
The story line in terms of its realism is flimsy. We are to believe that Jean-Paul is an elite runner, which raises the question as to where is his coach? Most Olympic level athletes would have a coach accompanying them by the time the series was made. He turns up late for the start of the race, but when the episode finishes we are to believe he has caught up with all of his fellow elite athletes who run at a pace of on or below 5 minutes per mile, and is winning. It is all very improbable.
However one wonders if the inspiration for this tale came from the writers reading about Suriname’s Siegfried Esajas at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Trying to find out if that is the case has drawn a blank. However it seems likely, and the show has in fact helped perpetrate a myth that had already existed for 35 years.
Siegfried Willem “Wim” Esajas was born in April 1935. He would become a multiple national record holder in the 800m, 1500m and 3000m events in the 1950s, he was the Dutch champion in the 800m and was selected as the Surinamese Sportman of the Year in 1956.
When the 1960 Rome Olympics came around Suriname sent a team with the smallest possible number of athletes, a solitary Siegfried Esajas, who was to compete in the 800-metres. At the time of the Rome Olympics, Suriname was a Dutch colony. It was granted full independence in 1975. The population as of 2018 was just under 600,000.
There have been many world class footballers of Surinamese descent, Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard, Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf, Patrick Kluivert, Aron Winter, Virgil van Dijk and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who have all played for The Netherlands.
In 1960 Esajas was going to put Suriname on the map in terms of peoples awareness of it and where it was located. He was their first Olympian and he was a serious medal hope.
The first qualifying race for the 800m took place on Wednesday 31st August at 11am, but there was no Esajas. When Esajas arrived at the stadium ready for the qualifying race in the afternoon, he was understandably shocked to discover that the race had actually been run that morning. From there the longstanding myth eventuated that he had slept in and missed it.
Every four years the myth would be retold by Olympic commentators. They may not remember Esajas’ name, but they would remember that the runner came from Suriname. In 1976 in Montreal Suriname was announced as they entered the Olympic stadium at the opening ceremony as “the country that slept through its first Olympics.”
Esajas’ first coach, Hugo Wiersma, was one who never believed that the runner had overslept. Wiersma had travelled to Rome to watch his former trainee compete and was by all accounts the first to tell him he had missed his heat.He told the press in 2005 when aged 80, “I found Esajas … in a relaxed position concentrating for his heat, which he thought was a few hours away,. I was the first one to talk to him and he was devastated.”
After the Olympics Esajas felt that he had disgraced his country and was understandably embarrassed. He retired from sport and graduated in horticulture from a college in Deventer, the Netherlands, before returning home to Suriname to grow flowers.
Only in 2005 two weeks before his death did the truth of what happened that day come to light. It turned out that the secretary-general of the Suriname committee in 1960, Fred Glans, had mistakenly told Esajas that his morning race had been rescheduled for the afternoon. Glans’ account was found in the Suriname Olympic Committee’s records. Why had no one found this before?
Where the confusion probably arose, although the still-alive Fred Glans did not comment at the time, is that the quarter finals were being held in the afternoon.
It was only after learning that Esajas was terminally ill that a decision was made to take a fresh look into the matter.
Realising the mistake and the pain that he had lived with the committee presented Esajas with a plaque honouring him for being Suriname’s first Olympian and a letter of apology.
Two weeks later he passed away aged 70 in Paramaribo.
At the time of his passing his son Werner discussed how his father had to endure ridicule his whole life. When people brought it up it made his father angry and as he grew older he started to avoid seeing people. He claimed that in the last year of his life his father would frequently cry about what happened in Rome.
The apology and the plaque, even coming so late in his life finally gave his father peace. Yet his son Werner added “The events in Rome caused a wound in my father’s soul that never healed, he felt he was robbed of what could have been the greatest moment of his life.”
