When Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, it was an achievement that many regarded to be impossible to emulate.
However, at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, Owens's fellow American Carl Lewis was determined to prove the doubters wrong as he entered the men's 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100m relay. Incidentally, those were the same four events in which Owens had triumphed 48 years earlier.
Lewis won the 100m in just 9.99s, before two days later he went in search of the long jump crown. He flew into the lead in the opening round with a leap of 8.54m and that proved enough to secure a second gold medal ahead of his appearance in the 200m final.
Running in lane seven, just as he had done in the 100m, Lewis claimed the lead on the bend and was never going to be caught from that moment onwards as he set a then Olympic-record time of 19.80s.
It meant that when the relay came around 31 years ago today, Lewis was on the verge of greatness. He would run the anchor leg for the American team, which also included the talented Sam Graddy, Ron Brown and Calvin Smith.
The interchanges between the first three were clean, meaning that when Smith handed the baton to Lewis down the home straight, Team USA already had a clear lead.
However, rather than ease his way across the finish line, the 23-year-old powered down the track as if his life depended on it. Not only did he stretch his team's advantage to a massive margin, the time clocked was 37.84 - a new world record, beating the previous one set by the American squad a year earlier.
That quartet of gold medals would mark the start of Lewis's love affair with the Olympics, a competition in which he would go on to enjoy even more success as he claimed the top prizes in Seoul, Barcelona and Atalanta in a combination of different disciplines.
As a result, when he officially retired from track and field in 1997, Lewis was a nine-time Olympic champion.
Liam Apicella
