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Jesse Owens
Born
Four gold medals and the long jump duel with Luz Long, Berlin 1936
Jesse Owens won the 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump and 4x100 meters relay at the Berlin Games, staged under the Nazi regime. The long jump is the part to watch. Owens was in danger of failing to qualify, and the German jumper Luz Long is said to have told him to take off farther from the board. Owens went through, beat Long in a back-and-forth final, and the two became friends. Long was killed fighting for Germany in 1943, and Owens later visited his son. It is the clearest case on this list of sportsmanship crossing a political line.
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Fanny Blankers-Koen
Four gold medals at London 1948
The first Olympics after World War II belonged to a 30-year-old Dutch mother of two. Fanny Blankers-Koen won the 100 meters, 200 meters, 80 meters hurdles and 4x100 meters relay, and women were then limited to three individual events, so the rules may have cost her more. Watch it for what it says about women's sport at the time: the most dominant athlete of those Games was a mother, and the event limits show how little room the Games then gave her.
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Emil Zátopek
The distance triple at Helsinki 1952
Emil Zátopek won the 5,000 meters and the 10,000 meters, then decided at the last minute to run the marathon as well. It was the first marathon of his life, and he won it by about two and a half minutes. Three distance titles at one Games is a feat that still sounds implausible. Show the 10,000 meters first for his labored, grimacing running style, then the marathon, and the lesson about effort over elegance makes itself.
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Abebe Bikila
Born
The barefoot marathon win at Rome 1960
Abebe Bikila ran the first night marathon in Olympic history without shoes and won it, becoming Ethiopia's first Olympic gold medalist and the first Black African to win Olympic gold. Four years later he defended the title, this time wearing shoes. The footage of a barefoot runner pulling away through Rome at night is one of the most striking images the Games have produced, and a simple way into a lesson about what equipment does and does not matter.
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Wilma Rudolph
Born
Three sprint gold medals at Rome 1960
Wilma Rudolph overcame polio as a child, and in Rome she became the first American woman to win three gold medals at a single Olympics, in the 100 meters, the 200 meters and the 4x100 meters relay. Pair her races with Bikila's marathon from the same Games: two athletes whose stories began far from any expectation of Olympic glory. For a class talking about determination, a sprinter who began life fighting polio and ended up the star of the Games needs little explanation.
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Dick Fosbury
Born
The Fosbury Flop wins gold at Mexico City 1968
Dick Fosbury cleared the bar head first and backward while everyone else was still rolling over it face down, and he won the high jump with it. His technique completely revolutionized the event, and he is remembered more for the style than for the medal. That is the reason to show it: watch the rest of the field and then Fosbury, and you are looking at the moment a whole event changed shape. Four years later, at Munich, 28 of the 40 high jumpers were using his technique.
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Bob Beamon
Born
The 8.90-meter long jump at Mexico City 1968
Bob Beamon became the first man to jump beyond 28 feet and beyond 29 feet in the same leap, landing at 8.90 meters, or 29 feet 2 1/2 inches. It is generally recognized as one of the greatest single performances in sport, the world record stood until Mike Powell broke it in 1991, and it is still the Olympic record. The clip is a few seconds long, which is the point: watch how far past the other jumpers' marks he lands.
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1968 Olympics Black Power salute
Tommie Smith won the 200 meters in a world record 19.83 seconds and John Carlos took bronze, and on the podium in Mexico City in 1968 each raised a black-gloved fist. The silver medalist, Australia's Peter Norman, wore a human rights badge in support, and it was Norman who suggested they share one pair of gloves. None of the three ever ran at another Olympics, and Norman was ostracized at home; Australia formally apologized to him in 2012, six years after his death. Show the full ceremony rather than the still photo, so the third man on the podium gets his due.
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John Stephen Akhwari
Finishing the marathon at Mexico City 1968
John Stephen Akhwari of Tanzania was hobbled by a leg injury, ran on with his knee bandaged, walking and limping through the final miles, and entered the stadium in the dark, more than an hour after the winner. Bud Greenspan's cameras caught it, and asked why he had not stopped, Akhwari said his country had not sent him to start the race but to finish it. He was a genuinely good runner, fifth in the Commonwealth Games marathon two years later, which makes the finish a statement of pride rather than a novelty.
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Mark Spitz
Born
Seven gold medals at Munich 1972
Mark Spitz set out to win seven events in Munich and won all seven: the 100 and 200 meters freestyle, the 100 and 200 meters butterfly and three relays, every one of them in world-record time. No one won more golds at a single Games until Michael Phelps in Beijing in 2008, which makes this the natural pair for that later entry. The official Olympics channel has footage of the seven swims, and watching them back to back shows how a single athlete could own a whole program for a week.
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Nadia Comăneci
The first perfect 10, Montreal 1976
At 14, Nadia Comăneci of Romania scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics, on the uneven bars. The scoreboard had only three digits, because no one expected a 10, so it showed 1.00, and Comăneci herself only understood when she heard the noise in the arena. Show the routine first and the scoreboard second: students see why judges had no higher number to give, then see how unprepared the sport itself was for her.
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Miracle on Ice
A team of American college players beat the Soviet Union 4-3 at Lake Placid on February 22, 1980, in the middle of the Cold War. The Soviets were four-time defending Olympic champions and heavily favored, and the win was not even the final: the United States still had to beat Finland two days later for the gold. Al Michaels's ABC call over the closing seconds, "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!", is as famous as the hockey. It is the best clip here for showing how a sports result can carry a country's mood.
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Torvill and Dean
The Boléro free dance at Sarajevo 1984
Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean skated to Ravel's Boléro on February 14, 1984, and received 12 perfect 6.0 scores out of 18, including all nine for artistic impression. The British television audience was put at 17.5 million at the time, and the BBC now lists it at 24 million. Even viewers who know nothing about ice dance can see why it scored as it did, because the routine reads as one continuous piece of storytelling rather than a string of elements. It is the winter Games' clearest example of perfection in a judged sport.
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Joan Benoit
Born
Winning the first women's Olympic marathon, Los Angeles 1984
Until 1984 the Olympics had no marathon for women at all. About 50 women started the first one, and Joan Benoit of the United States won it in roughly two and a half hours, becoming the first women's Olympic marathon champion. The footage of her finish is short and easy to show, and it pairs naturally with a conversation about which events women were kept out of, and for how long.
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Carl Lewis
Four gold medals at Los Angeles 1984
Carl Lewis won the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump and the 4x100 meters relay, which he anchored, matching the four events Jesse Owens had won in Berlin 48 years earlier. Show his races after the Owens entry at the top of this list: the same four events, a home crowd instead of a hostile regime, and a clear way into a lesson about how an athlete can set out to equal a hero and actually do it.
More about Carl Lewis16
Jamaica national bobsleigh team
Jamaica's four-man bobsled at Calgary 1988
A team from a Caribbean island entered the Winter Olympics bobsled, and on one of its runs in the four-man event, driver Dudley Stokes lost control at high speed and the sled crashed. The crew climbed out and walked their sled to the finish to applause from the crowd, and the result went down as Did Not Finish. The film Cool Runnings later made the story famous and changed it, having the team carry the sled on their shoulders, so the real footage is the useful corrective. The picture shows the crew at the start of the four-man competition in Calgary.
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Greg Louganis
Born
Hitting the springboard and winning anyway, Seoul 1988
In the springboard preliminaries Greg Louganis gashed his head on the end of the board. He returned to the competition and went on to win gold in both the springboard and the platform, repeating his double from 1984. The footage is hard to watch for a second and then remarkable, because the dives after the injury are as clean as the ones before it. It is a direct lesson in getting back up on the board, literally.
More about Greg Louganis18
Lawrence Lemieux
Born
Abandoning his race to rescue two sailors, Seoul 1988
Canada's Lawrence Lemieux was in position for a silver medal in the Finn class, sailed off Pusan, when he saw that a Singaporean boat in another race had capsized. He left his own race to pull its sailors, Siew Shaw Her and Joseph Chan, from the water, then went back and finished 21st of 32. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch honored him at the medal ceremony, telling him that by his sportsmanship, self-sacrifice and courage he embodied all that is right with the Olympic ideal. It is the purest example here of choosing people over a result.
More about Lawrence Lemieux19
Derek Redmond
Born
The 400 meters semifinal with his father, Barcelona 1992
Britain's Derek Redmond tore his hamstring about 150 meters into his semifinal and kept going, hobbling down the track. His father, Jim, came out of the stands and helped him to the finish line to a standing ovation. Redmond did not win anything that night, and that is the lesson: one of the best-remembered images of those Games is a runner who refused to stop, and a parent who would not let him finish alone.
More about Derek Redmond20
Dan Jansen
The 1,000 meters gold at Lillehammer, February 18, 1994
On the day of the 500 meters at Calgary in 1988, Dan Jansen learned that his sister Jane had died of leukemia, and he fell in that race. Six years later the Lillehammer 500 meters fell on the anniversary of her death and he slipped again. His last chance was the 1,000 meters, and he won it in a world record. On the victory lap he carried his baby daughter, also named Jane. The race footage is fine; the lap is why this belongs on any list of moments, and why it moves people who have never watched speed skating.
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Muhammad Ali
Born
Lighting the cauldron at Atlanta 1996
The last torchbearer of the Atlanta opening ceremony was Muhammad Ali, the boxer many consider the greatest heavyweight in history, and his appearance left the crowd in shock and tears. Slowed by Parkinson's disease and visibly shaking, he took the flame from the swimmer Janet Evans and lit the device that carried it up to the cauldron. There is no race and no medal in this clip, which is exactly why it belongs here: it works as a lesson in courage of a different kind, a frail champion appearing in front of the whole world.
More about Muhammad Ali22
Kerri Strug
Born
The final vault on an injured ankle, Atlanta 1996
With her team believing the gold still depended on her, Kerri Strug vaulted a second time on an injured ankle, landed and scored 9.712, and the United States won the women's team title. The image of her coach carrying her to the podium afterward is one of the most famous in Olympic history. It deserves a more critical viewing now than it got in 1996: a teenager vaulting hurt with a team medal riding on it is a good starting point for discussing what athletes should and should not be asked to risk.
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Michael Johnson (sprinter)
The 200 and 400 meters double at Atlanta 1996
Michael Johnson won the 400 meters by the largest margin since 1896, then ran the 200 meters in a world record 19.32 seconds, breaking his own record and becoming the first man to win both events at one Games. His final 100 meters of that 200 was timed at 9.20 seconds. Show the 200 meters final and watch the gap open around the bend, because few world records have looked so emphatic in real time.
More about Michael Johnson (sprinter)24
Cathy Freeman
Born
Lighting the cauldron, then winning the 400 meters, Sydney 2000
Cathy Freeman, an Aboriginal Australian, lit the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony, and then had to win the 400 meters in front of her own country. She did, by about four meters, four years after taking silver in Atlanta. Watch both clips together: the weight of a nation's expectations in the first, and the release in the second. Few athletes have carried so much symbolism into one race and come out the other side with the result.
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