Sohn Kee-chung's Oak Sapling

On the highest step of the podium, a young man had just been handed a potted plant.

Not a bouquet of flowers. An oak sapling, its trunk as slender as a finger, its few leaves still soft, planted in a clay pot just big enough to hold in two hands.

He accepted it. Then he did something nobody had told him to do.

He lifted the pot, pressed it close against his chest, and held it there. Then he bowed his head, eyes on his feet, and stood still for the rest of the ceremony.

Below him, the stadium was packed. Above, the flags were slowly being raised. The music swelled. Every champion looks up at his own flag at that moment. This one did not.

In the whole stadium that day, very few people understood what had just happened.

It happened in Berlin, on August 9, 1936.

A little earlier, the young man had finished running the marathon.

A marathon is 42 kilometers and 195 meters long, so long that daily life offers almost nothing to compare it with. The runners pass over every kind of road surface, through every kind of sun and wind, and through the stretch where both legs start to feel like two bags of wet sand.

He came in first, in 2 hours, 29 minutes and 19 seconds.

That figure is worth a moment's pause. In that much time, a family could finish dinner, wash the dishes, clear the table, and then sit down to watch most of a film. And for all that time he never sat down for a second, never stopped once. He just ran and ran.

No one at any earlier Olympics had covered that distance faster. It was a new Olympic record.

But the name recorded for the winner that day was not his.

They wrote Kitei Son.

His real name was Sohn Kee-chung. At the time, his homeland was under Japanese rule, so he had to compete on the Japanese team, under a different name.

Now the moment on the podium takes on a very different meaning.

On the chest of his running shirt was printed a flag. It was not the flag of his homeland.

The oak sapling itself had nothing to do with that. It was simply the gift every Olympic champion received in those days, a young tree to take home and plant in the ground. The idea was a lovely one. Decades later, when the champion had grown old, the tree would stand far taller than him, and it would still be there.

But the pot was just big enough.

Big enough that, lifted against his chest, it covered the spot where the flag was.

He did not shout a single word. He did not raise his hand, did not turn his back, did nothing that would make anyone step in. He simply held a tree, and bowed his head.

A child looking at that photograph would understand at once, without a word of explanation.

Six days later, on August 15, 1936, he signed his name on a postcard. He signed in Korean letters, the script of his homeland. Then, beside the signature, he added one word in English: Korean.

Just one word. No explanation, no argument, nothing else at all.

And he kept that habit afterward. Whenever he could sign his name in his own country's script, he did.

His gold medal is now in South Korea, listed among the country's cultural heritage. It was the first Olympic gold medal ever won by a Korean athlete. But the thing that stays longest in this story is not the medal. It is the potted plant.

Then time passed. A very long time.

Fifty-two years.

On September 17, 1988, the city of Seoul opened its own Olympic Games. The stadium was full. The Olympic torch had been passed from hand to hand across the city, and on the last stretch, the torchbearer ran into the middle of the stadium.

That runner was 76 years old.

He ran in to the cheers of tens of thousands of people. And he did not run in the stately, slow, solemn way people usually picture a 76-year-old man at a grand ceremony. He bounced as he ran. The torch bobbed up and down with every step. His shoulders swayed. He looked just like a child who has been given a present and cannot hide his delight.

This time there was no potted plant to hold. His hands were free, and he raised the torch high.

This time he lifted his head.

And this time, the name that went with him was his real name. Sohn Kee-chung.

The same man. Another packed stadium. Another Olympic flame. Only the posture was different.

In 1936, both hands holding a young potted tree, head bowed, standing still.

Fifty-two years later, both hands raising a torch high, head up, and 76-year-old legs skipping along the track, while a whole stadium cheered.