Frank Shorter

Shorter's 1972 Munich gold is often credited with sparking the American running boom, but his second Olympic marathon is the more complicated story. In Montreal in 1976 he took silver behind East Germany's Waldemar Cierpinski, whose name later surfaced in files on the state doping programme. The official result has never been changed, and Shorter went on to campaign hard for clean sport, which gives his career a second life beyond the finish line.