Carl Lewis electrified the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics when, at the tender age of 23, he built on his 1983 World Championships title with four gold medals at the Games.
The quartet would be followed by five more winning medals in the 1988 and 1992 Games in Seoul and Barcelona respectively, but Lewis' triumph in LA was also a huge personal boost after his star was determined to have faded.
Prior to the Games, he dabbled in acting lessons (he rejected the role of playing Jessie Owens in a film about his 1936 Games exploits) and swatted away invitations to play for the Chicago Bulls in the NBA and the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL.
Lewis claimed he was waiting for the "so-called big bucks" (he snubbed an endorsement deal with Coca-Cola). And soon it became apparent that Lewis, who would look around and celebrate victory during races, was one of those athletes who prompted schadenfreude in failure.
Of course, that didn't occur in '84. But after winning his first gold he was chastised, then after winning his second he was immediately booed. An American outcast on American soil.
When Daley Thompson won the decathlon, he revealed a T-shirt which read: "Is the world's second best athlete gay?" Lewis dressed flamboyantly and his flat-top haircut augmented the whispers.
He however was unruffled by rumours about his sexuality, retorting: "They say I'm a coke freak, that I'm a homosexual. They say it because no one knows what I'm doing. I don't even stay in the same hotel as the other athletes any more. I could be sleeping with a horse for all they know."
Deemed unmarketable (Nike ended a three-year association with him), it wasn't until the next decade and Barça '92, when he appeared in a Panasonic commercial, that the harbinger was cast.
Four years on in Atlanta, when his face flashed up on the big screen, 80,000 people stood and applauded. An American hero on American soil.