Which athlete won the men's 100 metres at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?

Jesse Owens won the men’s 100 metres at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Owens represented the United States and won the final in 10.3 seconds, matching the Olympic record. He finished ahead of fellow American Ralph Metcalfe and Dutch runner Tinus Osendarp. The victory was the first of Owens’s four gold medals in Berlin.

His performance became one of the most remembered episodes in Olympic history because the Games were staged by Nazi Germany, whose propaganda promoted racist theories of Aryan superiority. Owens’s success directly challenged those claims, although later retellings sometimes simplify the political and personal story surrounding the Games.

Owens also won the 200 metres, long jump and 4 × 100 metres relay. His four athletics golds made him the dominant track-and-field athlete of the 1936 Olympics.