Jesse Owens, Ohio State: Collegiate Athlete Hall of Fame, Class of 2022

Jesse Owens stands alone in many facets of track & field. His collegiate career was so illustrious that some of his achievements while at Ohio State still have yet to be duplicated.

He was the first athlete to win four individual titles at the NCAA Championships, a 1935 feat he repeated in 1936. No one has yet matched that accomplishment on any level of national collegiate competition. His career total of eight individual NCAA titles remains the most, despite only two years of Varsity competition in which he never lost to anyone in collegiate competition.

The lore of his greatness includes a day with its own name – the Day of Days. On May 25, 1935 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Owens won four events at the Big Ten Championships in the span of 45 minutes, setting five world records and tying a sixth. A 9.4 in the 100 yards tied the world record and was followed by just one attempt in the long jump – a 26-8¼ (8.13m) launch that would remain the WR for 25 years. He finished by winning the 220 yards (20.3) and 220-yard low hurdles (22.6) with times that also surpassed the best ever recorded at the shorter 200-meter distance.

At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Owens won four gold medals in Olympic records – the 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump and as leadoff runner on a world record-setting 4×100 relay. That quadruple has only been matched once since.