Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifetime as “perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history”.[4] He set three world records and tied another, all in less than an hour, at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a feat that has never been equaled and has been called “the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport”.[5]
He achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black American man, was credited with “single-handedly crushing Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy”.[6]
The Jesse Owens Award is USA Track & Field’s highest accolade for the year’s best track and field athlete. Owens was ranked by ESPN as the sixth-greatest North American athlete of the 20th century and the highest-ranked in his sport. In 1999, he was on the six-man short-list for the BBC’s Sports
