From political pandemonium to Jesse Owens' unlikely helping hand, we pick out a half-dozen of the Games' most remarkable stories

7/31/08

1) Michael Johnson breaks the world 200m record, Atlanta, 1996

What Johnson did in this race defies description, almost defied belief. Watch it again. At one point the cameraman has to jerk forwards to keep up with him because he's about to run off the screen. Frankie Fredericks beat the Olympic record by five hundreths of a second, and he was pipped to gold by a clear 10 yards. Johnson's time of 19.32 broke his own world record by a third of a second. No other man in history has run below 19.6.