When Bert Trautmann - a former German soldier - arrived at Manchester City four years after World War II ended, he knew not everyone at the club would welcome him.
Manchester City had a large contingent of Jewish supporters and it was known the tall, blonde-haired and blue eyed goalkeeper was a member of the Hitler Youth Movement before serving in Russia and France where he was captured and sent to a POW camp in north England.
At the end of hostilities Trautmann remained in England and played for St Helens before joining Manchester City. His arrival sparked outrage from Jewish groups but Manchester's communal rabbi urged for Trautmann to be given a chance.
Trautmann proved to be brave, playing on in the 1956 FA Cup final after he broke his neck. In 2010, three years before his death, he spoke of the moment the madness Hitler preached rang hollow.
"Growing up in Hitler's Germany, you had no mind of your own," he said. "You didn't think of the enemy as people at first. Then, when you began taking prisoners, you heard them cry for their mother and father. When you met the enemy, he became a real person."
Another who embraced his "enemy" as a fellow human was German long jumper Luz Long at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, a Games Hitler hijacked to push his view the Aryan race was superior to all others.
Jesse Owens, the grandson of slaves from Alabama, destroyed that philosophy when he won four gold track and field medals although it's possible he wouldn't have won the long jump had it not been for Long.
After being in danger of fouling out in the qualification round Long advised Owens to move his mark back a few centimetres to ensure a clean jump and it worked so well Hitler and many of the 100,000 people in the stadium were crestfallen when the Afro-American triumphed. The first person who congratulated him – in full view of the dictator – was Long, and Owens never forgot the gesture.
"You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-carat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment," he said.
Long and Owens remained friends even when the German fought in the war. He sent a letter to America with one heartfelt request should he die in battle.
"When the war is over, please go to Germany, find my son and tell him about his father," he wrote. "Tell him about the times when war did not separate us and tell him that things can be different between men in this world. Your brother, Luz."
He died of wounds and in 1951 Owens found Long's son in war-ravaged Germany and told him the greatest experience he gained from the Olympic Games was the friendship he forged when the eyes of the world – and a madman – was on two competitors.
Australian athlete Peter Norman came to prominence for wearing a tracksuit with the message "God Is Love" and at the 1968 Olympics he played his role in the famous Black Power salute by America's gold medal winner Tommie Smith and third-placed John Carlos.
They realised Norman's inner strength when they asked if he'd join them in making a statement.
"We knew that what we were going to do was far greater than any athletic feat," said Carlos. "He said, 'I'll stand with you'. He didn't [show fear]. I saw love. Peter never flinched [on the dais]. He never turned his eyes, he never turned his head. He never said so much as 'ouch'.
"Not every young white individual would have the gumption, the nerve, the backbone, to stand there."
Smith and Carlos were expelled from the Olympic Village and while they suffered — both men experienced difficulty in getting a job, they received death threats and Carlos' home was defaced — they celebrated Norman's dignity.
"Go and tell your kids the story of Peter Norman," said Carlos after he and Smith were pallbearers at Norman's funeral in 2006.
Sport can be a platform for the best of the human spirit but it's also a vehicle for fear, loathing and ignorance.
Muhammad Ali was said to have thrown his Olympic gold medal into a river after a racist encounter; Spanish football supporters threw bananas and made monkey noises at black players; the fact Brendan Nash was white gained more attention than his batting prowess when he was named in the West Indies cricket team in 2008.
When Afro-American Jack Johnson won the world heavyweight title in Sydney in 1908 the artist Norman Lindsay depicted him as half-man, half-ape. The Sydney reporter Randolph 'the Reckless' Bedford described Tommy Burns' defeat as "beautiful sunlight being snuffed out by ugly darkness".
Adam Goodes is constantly booed whenever he plays for the Sydney Swans. Some say it's because he shamed a 13-year-old girl by pointing her out to security after a racist slur in 2013, others blame the inconvenient truths he spoke about white Australia's black history after being named the 2014 Australian of the Year, others argue he stages for free kicks.
He may draw strength from Douglas Nicholls who "lived" at Victoria's Market and slept in fruit boxes when he arrived in the big smoke to trial for Carlton in 1927 only to be told he wasn't wanted because he "smelled".
After playing in the second-tier VFA competition he joined Fitzroy, was picked to represent Victoria and came third in the 1934 Brownlow Medal count. He also became a minister of religion, an advocate for Aboriginal rights and within half a century of being told by Carlton to beat it Nicholls was knighted and named governor of South Australia. The man who was called Australia's Gandhi because of his compassion proved – just as Trautmann, Long, Owens and Norman did – that character ultimately triumphs.
