As a 16-year-old high school student, Betty Robinson won a gold medal in the 100-meter dash at the Amsterdam 1928 Olympic Games.
Betty Robinson was just a high school student trying to catch a train home. Her biology teacher, who also coached the school’s boys track team, was already on the train – and he couldn’t believe that Robinson was able to race and make the train.
The teacher and coach, Charles Price, invited Robinson to train with the boys track team. (The school did not field a girls track team.) A few weeks later, at her first-ever track meet, Robinson finished second in the 100-meter dash to American record holder Helen Filkey.
Three months later, in her second race, Robinson beat Filkey in world-record time. Just 16 years old, Robinson would qualify for the Amsterdam 1928 Olympic Games and win a gold medal in the 100 – the first ever Olympic competition for women in track and field — and added a silver in the in 4×100-meter relay.
But that was just one of Robinson’s incredible performances. She missed the Los Angeles 1932 Olympic Games after nearly dying in a plane crash the previous year. Once thought dead, Robinson recovered from significant injuries that resulted in one leg being shorter than the other and prevented her from getting into a runner’s crouch.
Robinson, though, did not give up on her Olympic dream. Unable to get in a stance for the 100, she earned a spot on the 4×100-meter relay team and ran the third leg as the United States claimed gold at the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games.
Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games, a performance that went unmatched for nearly 50 years.
Competing against a backdrop of racial discrimination in Nazi Germany, Jesse Owens won gold medals on consecutive days in the 100-meter dash, the long jump and the 200-meter dash. Four days later, Owens helped the U.S. win gold in the 4×100-meter relay, giving Owens an incredible four gold medals – an Olympic performance that went unmatched for nearly 50 years.
Wilma Rudolph was unable to run until she was 11 years old, but she developed into a star athlete and at the Rome 1960 Olympic Games became the first American women to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games.
Wilma Rudolph had beaten the odds to qualify for the Melbourne 1956 Olympics Games, where as a 16-year-old she won a bronze medal in the 4×100-meter relay.
Rudolph was often sick as a child, suffering from double pneumonia and scarlet fever. She contracted polio. Her left leg was paralyzed. She was fitted for a metal brace that she wore for several years to help her get around. She wore a specially-made shoe to give her foot added support. It was not until age 11 that Rudolph could run.
While Rudolph developed into a star athlete in high school, she missed her senior year basketball season after becoming pregnant. That did not derail her Olympic dreams, though: Rudolph returned to the track and at the Rome 1960 Olympic Games, she won gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter races and the 4×100-meter relay, becoming the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games.
Bob Beamon’s gold medal-winning long jump at the Mexico City 1968 Olympic Games still stands as an Olympic record more than 50 years later.
They might be the most famous six seconds in Olympic Games history.
When Bob Beamon sprinted down the runway and planted his feet before jumping into the air at the Mexico City 1968 Olympic Games, there was no way to know that this would be such a memorable event.
But then Beamon soared further and further. When he came down in the sand, it was too far for the optical rail — installed to measure how far each competitor leaped in the long jump – to measure. It took a tape measure for officials to manually record Beamon’s jump: 29 feet 2 ½ inches, a world record that would stand for nearly 23 years and an Olympic record that remains today.
Mark Spitz won seven gold medals in eight days — setting a new world record in each event — at the Munich 1972 Olympic Games.
It is down in the record books as the most impressive 