Three of the top 100 meter runners get together with America's 1936 Olympic great Jesse Owens, who still holds the Olympic record for the event with a time of 10.3 seconds, for a warmup run at Melbourne's Olympic Village, Nov. 19th, 1956.
Hank walker / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images
The President named Olympic track star Jesse Owens an ambassador of sports, and he represented the President at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. The U.S. State Department sent Owens to Asia as a goodwill ambassador because it thought he embodied the finest democratic values. He taught athletic clinics for kids in India, Malaysia, and the Philippines — countries that U.S. officials feared would fall to communism.