Top 10 Olympic moments
17 July 2024
SHARE:
With 10,500 athletes competing across 32 sports for 329 gold medals over 19 days, the XXXIII modern summer Olympics in Paris is set to welcome over 15 million visitors, making it the largest event ever held in France. RL360 takes a look back over the previous Summer games to recall the greatest Olympic moments of all time.
1. 1936 Berlin – Jesse Owens defies Hitler:
Hitler wanted the 1936 Games in Berlin to showcase the superiority of the “new Aryan man”. Black American Jesse Owen’s 4 gold medals in sprint events shattered that myth, though ironically Owens faced significant discrimination when he returned home to a racially divided USA.
2. 1960 Rome – Shoeless Abebe Bikila breaks the marathon world record:
Ethiopian distance runner Abebe Bikila found that his new running shoes gave him blisters, so decided to run the 1960 Olympic marathon barefoot instead. In blistering Italian heat, Bikila sprinted over the finishing line in a new world record, becoming the first Ethiopian to win gold. He also became the first man to successfully defend his Marathon title in Tokyo, 4 years later.
3. 1968 – Beamon’s impossible leap:
American Bob Beamon’s amazing jump in the high altitude of Mexico City, no one had jumped further than 27 feet, 10 inches. Beamon’s leap of 29 feet 2.5 inches was so long the organisers had to bring in a longer tape to measure it. His incredible record stood for 23 years.
4. 1976 Montreal – Nadia Comaneci scores the perfect 10:
At 4ft 11 and weighing just 6st 2lbs, the 14 year old Romanian gymnast took to the asymmetric bars in Montreal and achieved what experts said was impossible – the perfect 10.00. So unexpected was the result that the digital scoreboard couldn’t actually display 4 digits.
5. 1980 Moscow – Coe v Ovett:
The 1980 Olympics, played out under the cloud of the US boycott, was the event of reckoning for Britain’s great middle distance runners, Seb Coe and Steve Ovett. They’d only met once on the track before the Games and the media hyped up their rivalry in the lead up to the Games. In the end, honours were even. Ovett won the 800m, but Coe took gold in the 1,500m.
6. 1988 Seoul – Ben Johnson tests positive:
Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson broke the 100m world record in taking gold at the Seoul Olympics. But within 48 hours, triumph turned to disgrace as Johnson’s urine sample was shown to have tested positive for the banned substance stanozolol. Johnson was stripped of his medal and world record. 6 of the 8 100m finalists in Seoul were tainted by positive tests or rumours of doping.
7. 1992 Sydney – The Dream Team win basketball gold:
1992 marked the point where the Games shed its outdated “amateur-only” principles and the USA fielded a basketball team full of NBA legends. Containing Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, the USA were invincible. It remains perhaps the greatest team ever assembled at an Olympic games.
8. 2008 Beijing – Phelps wins 8 golds:
Over the course of 8 days Phelps won all 8 swimming events he entered (in World Record times) and secured the greatest single haul of gold medals the Games has ever seen. Over 4 Olympics, Phelps won 28 medals, 23 of them gold. No one has come remotely close to winning that many medals.
9. 2008 Beijing – Bolt astonishes the world:
The world first witnessed the iconic Lightning Bolt celebration in 2008 when Usian Bolt suddenly re-ignited the world’s love affair with sprinting. The popular and charismatic Jamaican sprinter smashed the world record in both the 100m and 200m finals. He was so far ahead of the field he was even able to slow down as he approached the winning tape.
10. 2012 London – Super Saturday’s British gold rush:
A joyous London Games reached its pinnacle for the host nation on the middle Saturday. Earlier gold medals in rowing (x 2) and cycling set the scene for an unforgettable night of athletics in the Olympic stadium. First Jessica Ennis-Hill won the heptathlon gold, Greg Rutherford then unexpectedly leapt to victory in the long jump, and then in a thrilling finale Mo Farah was victorious in the 10,000m.