Boy, the Houston Astros’ apology for cheating was EPIC in its vileness, no? (Here is SorryWatch in the Houston Chronicle, discussing just how epic.) Why, it seems like just yesterday we were gaping at this team’s propensity toward crap apologies. In the Astros’ honor, let’s take this opportunity to look at a GOOD sports-related apology from the annals of history.

Peter Norman was an Australian track & field star who won a silver medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. The other two medalists  on the podium with him were Americans John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who gave the Black Power salute as the Star-Spangled Banner was played. (You see, youngsters, Colin Kaepernick is not the first Black athlete to protest racial inequity.) Norman was supportive of their protest, which Carlos and Smith had told Norman they were planning. “We knew that what we were going to do was far greater than any athletic feat,” Carlos told Aussie sportswriter Martin Flanagan. “He said, ‘I’ll stand with you.'” Carlos said that he’d expected to see fear in Norman’s eyes, but he didn’t. “‘I saw love,” he said.

On the way to the podium, Norman spotted an American athlete wearing an Olympic Project for Human Rights pin (Carlos and Smith co-founded the organization to protest racism in sports and in general) and asked to borrow it. He wore it on his lapel during the medal ceremony.

All three athletes faced swift backlash. Like Kaepernick, the African-American athletes received death threats. Both were kicked out of the Olympics and sent home, where they had trouble finding work. Eventually, though, both created fulfilling careers: Smith as a track coach and sociology professor at Oberlin College, and Carlos as a high school track coach, sportswear brand consultant and organizer for the 1984 Olympics committee. Both were inducted into the National Track & Field Hall of Fame. But Norman’s career never recovered. Even though he qualified multiple times for the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the Australian Olympic Committee wouldn’t allow him on the team. Even though his national record in the 200 meters is still standing (a record! set in 1968! is still standing!), his name was kept out of books about the greatest Australian athletes or greatest moments in Australian sports. He was invited to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney as a guest not of the Australian Olympic Foundation, but of the US Track & Field Federation. The AOC didn’t acknowledge him at all. Norman struggled with depression and addiction and died in 2006 at the age of 64. The US Track & Field Federation named the day of his funeral Peter Norman Day; Australian sporting authorities called it nothing.

But finally, six years after his death, Norman received a unanimous apology from Australian Parliament. The apology said that Parliament:

(1) recognises the extraordinary athletic achievements of the late Peter Norman, who won the silver medal in the 200 metres sprint running event at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, in a time of 20.06 seconds, which still stands as the Australian record;

(2) acknowledges the bravery of Peter Norman in donning an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge on the podium, in solidarity with African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who gave the ‘black power’ salute;

(3) apologises to Peter Norman for the treatment he received upon his return to Australia, and the failure to fully recognise his inspirational role before his untimely death in 2006; and

(4) belatedly recognises the powerful role that Peter Norman played in furthering racial equality.

This apology is good in its level of detail. It’s better if you don’t know that point #3 originally apologized explicitly “for the wrong done by Australia in failing to send [Norman] to the 1972 Munich Olympics, despite repeatedly qualifying.” The apology became less specific, presumably as a sop to the Australian Olympic Committee. In 2018, the committee awarded Norman an “Order of Merit,” but it wasn’t accompanied by an apology. But as for the Australian government, not bad. (Kudos especially to MP Andrew Leigh, who spearheaded the drive for a national apology.) The bar for sports apologies, honestly, is pretty low.

But Smith and Carlos never forgot that Norman stood with them. Both men served as pallbearers at Norman’s funeral in 2006. Smith said in his eulogy that Norman was “a man who believed right could never be wrong” and told Norman’s family that their loved one’s “legacy is a rock. Stand on that rock.” Carlos spoke too, urging Australia: “Go and tell your kids the story of Peter Norman.”