Giants playing catch…

While The Spoiler danced the summer of 1992 away in a field with a mob of gurning trustafarians, over in Barcelona some of the planet’s finest basketball players were showcasing their sport. Big names like Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Scottie Pippen and Sir Michael Jordan bounced and soared their way to an Olympic gold medal, and the whole of the world went basketball crazy. For about a week.

Even the posh kids with dreadlocks.

Man smears powdered egg in Nazi faces

There was so much wrong about Hitler - the indie kid haircut, the Chaplin moustache, the ill fitting suits. Not to mention his massive racism issues and war waging. What was with that, Adolf? Seriously. Anyway, no matter, we killed him in the end, and all of his mean Nazi cohorts ended up looking like idiots. That all happened in about 1945, but it was a whole nine years earlier, in 1936, that a brilliant young black athlete called Jesse Owens kicked off the humiliation by beating a load of Aryans at running and jumping. He won four gold medals in Berlin.

Stand aside people, legend coming through…

In 1984, everyone wanted to be American. Playgrounds were awash with young boys sporting Michael Jackson’s one glove, girls skipping around in Madonna wedding dresses. And, lurking in the corner somewhere near the bike sheds were the kids who wanted to be Carl Lewis. They were essentially brilliant at absolutely everything, but totally lacking in social skills. That summer, the great man equaled Jesse Owens’ record of four gold medals (100m, 200m, long jump, relay), whilst simultaneously convincing the planet that his superhuman arrogance was a little bit abhorrent. In the above clip, legendary funny man Eddie Murphy does an impression.

It was Moscow, it was 1980, no Americans were there…

Back in the days before he became the right honorable Lord and Baron Sebastian Newbold Coe, this weedy-looking conservative was one hell of a long distance running oik. What marked out his 1500 metres triumph in 1980 was that he was up against Steve Ovett, a man of the people - hence, the nation was divided over who should take gold. Of course, as with everything in the 1980s, the snootiest runner won with all the good grace of a spiky young princess stealing toys from an orphanage.