Jesse Owens won four gold medals in track and field at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
Representing the United States in Berlin, Owens won the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and 4 × 100 metres relay. His victories made him the most prominent track-and-field athlete of the Games.
Owens’s long-jump contest with Germany’s Luz Long became one of the most remembered episodes of the Berlin Olympics. Owens won with a jump of 8.06 metres, while Long took silver.
The Games were staged by Nazi Germany and used for political spectacle, but Owens’s performances directly challenged racist claims about athletic ability. Carl Lewis later matched the achievement of four athletics golds at a single Games in 1984.