The Australian sprinter whose career was killed by the 'Black Power' podium protest

This article is part of Yahoo's 'On This Day' series

It is a moment that will live on in Olympic history, perhaps more so than any race.

On this day 53 years ago, US track athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a "Black Power" salute.

But there was a third man on the podium that day in Mexico City on 16 October, 1968.

Australian sprinter Peter Norman, who had finished in second place in the 200m, sandwiched in between Smith who won gold and Carlos who took bronze, supported the American runners’ cause.

All three athletes wore human rights badges on their jackets when collecting their medals, and it was Norman who suggested that Smith and Carlos wear a black glove each after the latter left his pair in the Olympic village.

Norman had been a critic of his nation’s former White Australia Policy and was sympathetic to the US pair’s demonstration.

Although he did not raise his fist, he stood with his fellow athletes. Norman asked how he could support them, and Smith and Carlos suggested he wear a badge for the Olympic Project for Human Rights, a group the two African-Americans had helped establish which protested against racial segregation in the US and in South Africa, and against racism in sports.

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Smith and Carlos raised their gloved fists to the air during the playing of the US national anthem, a gesture that made news around the world.

US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated earlier that year and racial tensions were high back home.

The pair were booed by the crowd - who shouted racist abuse - and suspended from the US team by the International Olympic Committee, which also ejected them from the athletes’ village.

On their return home to the US, they were abused and their families received death threats. Both Smith and Carlos continued with careers in sport - going into the NFL and athletics coaching.

In his autobiography, published three decades after the gesture, Smith revised his statement that the salute was about “Black Power”, saying it was instead about “human rights”.

Norman was also ostracised. Despite making the qualifying time on several occasions, Australia did not select him for their Olympic team in 1972. His time of 20.06 seconds in the final in Mexico City remains an Oceanian record.

Carlos once said: “If we were getting beat up, Peter was facing an entire country and suffering alone.”

Norman played Australian Rules football during the 1970s before contracting gangrene after tearing his achilles tendon in a charity race in 1985, which almost led to him losing his leg. He suffered depression, alcoholism and an addiction to painkillers in the aftermath. He reportedly used his Olympic silver medal as a doorstop during this time.

When Sydney hosted the Olympics in 2000, his achievement and stance was not recognised by his home country, so the US invited him to take part in its celebrations.

Read more: Statue of Peter Norman to be erected in Melbourne

Norman worked as a sports administrator for Athletics Australia until 2006, when he died of a heart attack in Melbourne at the age of 64.

The US Track and Field Federation called 9 October 2006, the date of his funeral, Peter Norman Day, something later adopted by Australia.

Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at Norman’s funeral and delivered eulogies for the man who stood alongside them on that podium four decades previously.

In 2012, the Australian House of Representatives apologised for the country’s treatment of Norman, and MP Andrew Leigh told its Parliament that the athlete’s gesture in 1968 “was a moment of heroism and humility that advanced international awareness of racial inequality”.

In 2018, Norman was posthumously awarded the Australian Olympic Committee’s Order of Merit for the protest.

AOC president John Coates said: “We’ve been negligent in not recognising the role he played back then.”

A statue of Norman was unveiled on 9 October 2019 at the Albert Park athletics track in Melbourne.

In 2000, Norman told the New York Times: “I won a silver medal. But really, I ended up running the fastest race of my life to become part of something that transcended the Games.”

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In 2005, San Jose State University, where Smith and Carlos had been students, unveiled a 22-ft high statue recreating the pair’s protest.

There is no figure of the Australian athlete on the podium - but this is not an oversight.

Norman asked that his space on the statue be left empty so visitors could stand in his position and experience what he felt on that day in Mexico City 53 years ago.

Watch: The remarkable moments when politics upstaged the Olympic Games