The 10 Greatest Athletes of the Modern Olympics

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2. Carl Lewis (USA)

The most enduring athlete in some of track and field's most glamorous events, Carl Lewis was the face of the Games during four Olympics, including two on American soil. In 1983, he became the first person to sweep the 100, 200 and long jump at the national championships since Malcolm Ford in 1886. That set the scene for Lewis' incredible Olympics at Los Angeles in 1984. He cleaned up the 100, 200 and long jump, and also anchored the winning 4-x-100 relay. Olympic records fell in the 200 and relay, the latter also a world record. Four years later at Seoul, both the gold and Olympic record in the 100 fell to Lewis after Canada's Ben Johnson was disqualified due to a positive doping test. Lewis was runner-up to teammate Joe DeLoach in the 200. And he led an American sweep of the long jump, ahead of Mike Powell and Larry Myricks. In 1992 at Barcelona, Lewis claimed his third long-jump gold, leading another U.S. sweep as Powell and Joe Greene followed. Lewis also anchored the winning 4-x-100 relay in world-record time. Lewis won a fourth long-jump gold at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

Flanked by the athletes from Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany – two nations poised as future enemies in war – Jesse Owens honors the red, white and blue with a gold salute.

1. Jesse Owens (USA)

Carl Lewis won more medals, but Jesse Owens was the one who cleared the path to those successes. Overcoming the injustice of a segregated society and debunking Hitler's "Aryan superiority" dogma, Owens won the 100, 200, long jump and 4-x-100 relay at the 1936 Berlin Games. He equaled the Olympic record in the 100 at 10.3 seconds, and broke Olympic records in his other events. He stretched out to 26-5 1/2 in the long jump, sprinted the 200 in 20.7 and led off a relay that clocked a world-record 39.8. One can only wonder what else he might have done had he competed in an age of integration and professionalism such as Lewis knew.