On This Day | 3 August 1936.

On this day, Jesse Owens won the first of what would become four gold medals at the Berlin Olympic Games, taking out the 100-metre sprint with a time of 10.3 seconds in front of a crowd that included Adolf Hitler. Over the following week, Owens would also claim gold in the long jump, 200 metres and 4 × 100-metre relay, becoming the standout athlete of the Games.

The 1936 Olympics were intended to showcase Nazi Germany and promote Hitler's racist ideology of so-called Aryan superiority. Instead, an African American athlete from Alabama became the defining image of the Games.

Owens' achievements were about much more than medals. They challenged prejudice on one of the world's biggest stages and proved that talent, determination and courage cannot be measured by the colour of a person's skin.

There's another important layer to the story. While Owens became an international hero in Berlin, he returned home to a United States where segregation and discrimination were still part of everyday life. His victories exposed not only the hypocrisy of Nazi racism, but also the inequalities that existed in his own country.

"The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that's where it's at."

— Jesse Owens.