Bob Hayes

At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Hayes's performance in the 100 meters was amazing. His time equaled the current world record of ten seconds, but he achieved it while running on a wet cinder track that had been chewed up by a previous event. In addition, one of Hayes's shoes had been misplaced, so he won the event while wearing one borrowed shoe—and he beat the other runners by more than two meters. In Sports Illustrated, Paul Zimmerman described Hayes's response to winning the gold medal: "He did a little hop-step across the room, stopped, put his hands on his temples, looked upward and let out a big surge of emotion: 'Ooooh! Ooooh! He did this for five minutes or so before being called out to get his medal. I can't remember ever seeing such pure joy in a human being."

In the 4 × 100-meter relay, Hayes ran the anchor leg, taking his team from fifth place, three meters behind the leader, to the gold medal, winning by three meters. His split was clocked at 8.6 seconds. The team as a whole set a world record of 39.06 seconds. When Hayes returned home, he went to Griffin's house, and thanked Griffin for his coaching. Then he put his gold medal around Griffin's neck. Hayes told Kindred, "In good times and bad times, Coach Pete was there for me…. When I was down, he was up for me."