Athletics at the 1968 Ciudad de México Summer Games:

The 1968 Olympic Games were held in Ciudad de México (Mexico City), which sits at an altitude of 2,240 metres (7,350 feet). Though organizers and the IOC were worried about the effects of the altitude on distance runners, they were not expecting the deluge of fast times in the short races and jumps. The world record was broken multiple times in the triple jump, Bob Beamon set his legendary world record in the long jump, and the sprinters went wild. The two favorites were Americans Jim Hines and Charlie Greene, both of whom had run several times under 10 seconds, not all of them with legal wind, however, and most hand-timed. The only non-American contender appeared to be Jamaican Lennox Miller. In the Olympic final, after a spate of fast times in the rounds, Jim Hines got off slowly but began a steady drive that took him to the gold medal in 9.95 seconds, the first legal time under 10 seconds on automatic timing. Miller pipped Greene at the line for the silver medal.