Exactly one year ago today, Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay were making history in Beijing at the 2008 Olympics.

Today, the two track stars find themselves in Berlin at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics – this time, reliving history.

While attending Ohio State University just before the '36 Olympics, Owens was known as the "Buckeye Bullet"

Both men cruised into the semifinals of the world championship’s 100 meters: Gay, the three-time world champion from the U.S., won his quarterfinal in 9.98 seconds while Bolt, the three-time Olympic champion from Jamaica, finished second in his heat at 10.03.

Still, as the week’s most prominent headline seems to be the matchup between these two running heavyweights, there’s no doubting the underlying historical significance of their competing in Berlin, where Jesse Owens won four gold medals during Hitler’s 1936 Olympics.

Hitler and his Nazi Germany anticipated the games that year to exhibit to the world at large the emergence of a new superpower and, above all else, the superiority of the Aryan race as demonstrated through athletic competition. But much to the chagrin of the ruthless dictator, Owens had other plans as he went on to win the 100-meter sprint, the 200-meter sprint, the 4×100-meter relay, and the long jump. The infamous moment coming when Hitler refused to acknowledge Owens’ accomplishments by neither applauding nor shaking his hand after the games.

However, Owens memorably conceded that it wasn’t Hitler’s snub that irked him most, but rather his own country’s lack of progress when it came to race issues. The Olympic-champion had this to say in an article by ESPN.com’s Larry Schwartz:

“When I returned to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus,” Owens said. “I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either.”

Almost 30 years since his death, the U.S. is a different country from the one Owens described in the quote above. Civil rights have become a permanent institution in the country’s structure, and race relations in general are nothing near what they were in the 1930s. Owens, too, has received his due honor in the form of a Medal of Freedom from President Ford, the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Bush the first, and perhaps most notably, a street in Berlin re-named Jesse-Owens-Allee.

During the 2009 world championships, members of the U.S. team will wear “JO” on their uniforms in tribute to Owens.

“The JO on the uniform is basically just letting me know it’s bigger than me just going out and running for myself,” said LaShawn Merritt, the reigning Olympic champion in the men’s 400 meters, in a recent New York Time’s article.

As Bolt and Gay prepare to potentially face each other in what would be a global showdown for the ages, there’s no doubting Owens will be on everyone’s minds in Berlin. Bolt, he said, is going to use that for some inspiration:

“It’s going to be big because Jesse Owens made history here. I’m going to come here and try to do the same, try to make great things happen.”

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