Bob Beamon

Beamon set the Track and Field world on its ear at the 1968 Olympic long jump in Mexico City, when he jumped 29 feet, two-and-one-half inches to win the gold medal. Beamon's jump was a world record that eclipsed the previous record by 21 3/4 inches. The jump still stands as an Olympic record, and stood as a world record until Mike Powell leapt 29' 4 1/2" at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo.

Avery Brundage

Brundage spent most of his life as a dedicated supporter of the Olympic movement. In 1912, he competed in the Olympic decathlon and pentathlon with another U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame member--Jim Thorpe. After moving out of the athletic arena, Brundage served as president of the U.S. Olympic Committee from 1932-52, and followed that with a stint as president of the International Olympic Committee from 1952-72. In 1972, Brundage became the first recipient of the IOC Gold Medal of the Olympic Order.

Dick Button

In 1948, Button became the first U.S. figure skater to win an Olympic gold medal, enthralling spectators in St. Moritz with never-before-attempted maneuvers such as the flying sitspin, flying camel, double axel, double lutz and double flip. He followed that performance up with a second gold in 1952 in Oslo. In both performances combined, only one of the 18 judges did not award Button a first-place vote.

Cassius Clay

Muhammad Ali, then an 18-year-old named Cassius Clay from Louisville, Ky., floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee on his way to a gold medal in the 178-pound class at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. In the final, he won a unanimous decision over three-time European champion Zbigniew Pietrzykowski of Poland. In the professional ranks, the animated Ali became only boxer to win the world heavyweight championship three separate times. The second and third times were against fellow U.S. Olympic gold medalists -- George Foreman (1968) and Leon Spinks (1976).

Mildred "Babe" Didrikson

At the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Didrikson won gold medals in the javelin (Olympic record) and 80-meter hurdles (world record), along with a silver in the high jump (share of the world record). Later, as a golfer, Didrikson won the U.S. Amateur Championship, the British Women's Amateur, and three U.S. Women's Opens--one by 12 strokes. The Associated Press voted Didrikson Woman Athlete of the Year five times, and Greatest Woman Athlete of the first half-century.

William Harrison Dillard

As a 13-year-old in Cleveland, Ohio, Dillard attended a parade honoring Jesse Owens' quadruple-gold medal performance at the 1936 Olympic Games. Dillard later followed in his hero's footsteps, and became a track star in his own right. From May 1947 through June 1948, Dillard, running mostly in the hurdles, won 82 straight races. He won two gold medals apiece at the 1948 (100-meter dash, 400-meter relay) and 1952 (110-meter hurdles, 400-meter relay) Olympic Games, becoming the first runner to win a dash event in one Olympic Games and a hurdles event in another.

Eddie Eagan

Eagan's claim to fame is that he is the only athlete in Olympic history to have won gold medals in the Winter and Summer Games. As a light-heavyweight boxer, he struck gold in the 1920 Games at Antwerp. After being eliminated in the first round of the Olympic heavyweight boxing competition in 1924, the Rhodes Scholar earned his second gold medal as a member of the U.S. four-man bobsled team in Lake Placid in 1932. Amazingly, he had only taken up bobsledding three weeks before those Games.

Ray Ewry

Ewry, who competed in the standing high jump, standing broad jump and standing triple jump, won eight gold medals in three Olympic Games, plus two more in the unofficial Intercalated Games of 1906. Ewry, who contracted polio as a boy, was wheelchair-bound for awhile, and it was thought that he might be paralyzed for life. He obviously recovered, and never lost an Olympic event he entered.

Peggy Fleming

Fleming was the darling of the 1968 Olympic Winter Games in Grenoble. In the ladies'Figure Skating competition, she won the only U.S. gold medal of those Games with graceful excellence. A five-time U.S. champion, Fleming was supported wholeheartedly by her father, who moved the family from city to city so that she might enjoy the best instruction and facilities possible, and mother, who designed and hand-sewed her costumes.

Eric Heiden

The U.S. team won six gold medals at the 1980 Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid. Eric Heiden won five of them. The versatile speedskater the 500, 1,000, 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000 meter races. More incredibly, he broke Olympic records in the first four, and a world record in the last one. His performances were so inspiring that in the three shorter races, the skaters who were paired with Heiden all won silver medals. Heiden was the first person in Olympic history to win five individual gold medals at one Games.

Rafer Johnson

Entering the 1,500 meter run, the final event of the decathlon competition at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Rafer Johnson led his UCLA teammate, C.K. Yang of China, by 67 points. Yang, whose personal-best time in the 1,500 was 18 seconds better than Johnson's, needed to beat Johnson by only 10 seconds to win the gold medal. Johnson courageously ran a personal-best time in the 1,500 by nearly five seconds, finished just 1.2 seconds behind Yang, and won the gold medal. His total of 8,392 points was an Olympic record for the decathlon. Johnson's next great Olympic moment came in 1984, when he had the honor of lighting the flame during the Opening Ceremonies at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Bob Mathias

Nine U.S. men have won Olympic gold medals in the decathlon, but only one has won the event twice--Bob Mathias. In 1948, a 17-year-old Mathias won his first Olympic decathlon in London, only a few months after trying the event out for the first time at the suggestion of his high school track coach. After spending a few years as a star fullback for the Stanford University football team, Mathias came to Helsinki in 1952 to break the world record with 7,887 points and earn his second Olympic gold.

Al Oerter

Many great athletes have dominated their events in the Olympic Games, but none for as long as Al Oerter. Oerter won gold medals in the discus throw in four consecutive Games--1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968. Each time Oerter won, he set a new Olympic record. In his final Olympic competition in Mexico City, Oerter was in fourth place heading into the third round. He needed a big throw to get into the medal hunt, and got it--212 feet, six inches, which was five feet further than he had ever thrown before, and enough to clinch gold medal #4.

Jesse Owens

Adolf Hitler planned the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were to be a showcase of Aryan supremacy to the world. Jesse Owens turned the Games into his own personal showcase. In one of the great performances in Olympic history, the African-American Owens won gold medals in the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, 4x100-meter relay and long jump. Owens' performances in the 200 meters and long jump were Olympic records, while the relay team broke a world record.

Bob Richards

Known as "The Vaulting Vicar," Reverend Bob Richards is one of the greatest field athletes America has ever produced. He won a bronze medal in the pole vault at his first Olympic competition in 1948, and followed with Olympic record-setting gold medal perfromances in 1952 and 1956. In 1951, Richards became just the second man in history to vault 15 feet. Not just a pole vaulter, Richards was a tremendous all-around athlete, as he won three U.S. decathlon championships (1951, 1954-55).

Wilma Rudolph

After overcoming a sickly childhood during which she lost the use of her left leg for a time, Wilma Rudolph became one of the most decorated women in U.S. Olympic history. She won three gold medals in 1960 (100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, 4x100-meter relay), and a bronze in 1956 (4x100-meter relay). In the 1960 4x100-meter relay, Rudolph, running the anchor leg, overcame a deficit caused by an errant baton pass to lead the team to the gold medal.

Don Schollander

Schollander is one of many in a line of great U.S. swimmers. In 1964, at the tender age of 18, he became the first swimmer to win four gold medals in a single Olympic Games, including a world record performance in the 400-meter freestyle and an Olympic record performance in the 100-meter freestyle. Schollander added a gold and a bronze to his Olympic medal total in Mexico City in 1968. Over the course of his career, Schollander broke 22 world records and 37 American records.

Mark Spitz

Spitz was the dominant performer at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, and possibly the most dominant athlete in any Olympic Games. After coming home with two gold, one silver and one bronze medal from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, he returned from Munich with seven more gold medals. In each of those seven events--four individual and three relay--Spitz established a new world record. He has won as many gold medals as any athlete in Olympic history, and is tied with Matt Biondi (swimming) and Carl Osburn (shooting) for the most medals ever won by a U.S. Olympian (11).

Jim Thorpe

Named "The Greatest Male Athlete of the First Half-Century" by the Associated Press, the "Carlisle Indian" was one of America's first great Olympians. In 1912, he became the first and only athlete ever to win the Olympic decathlon and pentathlon. Of the 15 events comprising these two tests of endurance, Thorpe won a mind-boggling eight. His decathlon score was so outstanding that it would have won him a silver medal at the 1948 Olympics. Thorpe was later elected to both the college and professional football Halls of Fame, and spent six years as a major league baseball player.

Johnny Weissmuller

Weissmuller won three gold medals as a swimmer at the 1924 Olympic Games, and added two more swimming golds and one bronze--in water polo--in 1928. Each of Weissmuller's three individual gold medals were Olympic record-setting efforts, while his two relay appearances resulted in world records. Weissmuller was actually training to compete in his third Olympic Games in 1932, but got sidetracked. That year, he made his film debut in Tarzan, the Ape Man, marking the first of 11 times he portrayed the character.

1980 U.S. Ice Hockey Team

William Baker, Neal Broten, David Christian, Steven Christoff, James Craig, Michael Eruzione, John Harrington, Steve Janaszak, Mark Johnson, Robert McClanahan, Kenneth Morrow, Mark Pavelich, John O'Callahan, Michael Ramsey, William "Buzz" Schneider, David Silk, Eric Strobel, Bob Suter, Philip Verchota, Mark Wells.

Of course you believe in miracles. The U.S. hockey team's gold medal win at the 1980 Olympic Winter Games was one of the biggest surprises in Olympic history, and its 4-3 defeat of the seemingly invincible Soviet team in the medal round might have been the Games' most shocking upset ever. When captain Mike Eruzione scored the go-ahead goal against the Soviets halfway through the third period, this team, which made a habit of comebacks throughout the Games in Lake Placid, truly captured the hearts and minds of the nation.

*Deceased