Eight years have passed since the United States women's gold-medal performance in Atlanta.

But she will be remembered for her gold-medal performance at the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France.

Roba delivered her gold-medal performance in 2 hours 26 minutes 5 seconds, improving on the Ethiopian national record by a full three minutes.

Both of these events yielded gold-medal winning performances, the latter being exceptional for the highest percentage score (6/7, 85%) on any board.

For only the second time since 1988, the average gold-medal performance in track and field improved, albeit slightly, between one Summer Olympics and the next.

Knowing that she plays a mythic figure, Cathy Rigby talks about giving a gold-medal performance every time.

Her winning time in the 10,000, 30:49.30, was almost 16 seconds faster than the gold-medal performance in Barcelona.

"I wanted to prove that what I did last summer would have led to a gold-medal performance."

Aamodt's combined time of 3 minutes 17.56 seconds was good enough for his sixth career Olympic medal and his first gold-medal performance in 10 years.

And she claimed she had not thought that she was pulling out a gold-medal performance.