It was an instinctive sporting gesture that went down in history and entered Olympic folklore, but for German long jump champion Luca Long, it had dark consequences.
And while Jesse Owens landed somewhere on the eight-meter mark and secured the gold medal at the 1936 Games, his biggest competitor Long jumped after him into the Berlin sand to hug him and congratulate him.
Sometime later, completely contrary to expectations given Nazi Germany's insane idea of Aryan supremacy and decades before the civil rights movement would ignite the spark of radical change in the United States, the two ran the lap of honor together, a black and a white athlete, arm in arm. .
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Not everyone applauded them.
High up in the stands, German leader Adolf Hitler watched this scene with reproach.
As they stood on the podium, Long giving the obligatory Nazi salute and Owens saluting the stars and stripes flag, a flag that was still not ready to accept him as one of its own, neither athlete was aware of what was unfolding over the hill.
Owens and Long, both born in 1913, were at the height of their athletic powers when they crossed spears in Berlin.
And there all similarity between them ends; their beginnings and path to the Games were completely different.
The story of Jesse Owens, the icon of the 20th century, is known to many.
He was the grandson of former slaves and the youngest of ten children in a laboring family in Alabama.
Even as a child, he picked cotton with the rest of the family, but his athletic abilities became evident when his family moved to Cleveland and when, at the age of nine, he started school.
His nickname was JC, which was an abbreviation of the name James Cleveland, but because his teacher misunderstood him when introducing himself as Jesse, this name stuck with him.
Owens received a sports scholarship at Ohio State University and there, under the coaching staff of Larry Snyder, he became one of the greatest sprinters the world has ever known.
At a track and field meet at the University of Michigan in 1935, Owens broke three world records and tied another record, all within an hour.
In the long jump, he flew to eight meters and 13 centimeters, and that result was considered a world record for the next 25 years.
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Unlike his rivals, Long had a privileged childhood - he grew up in Leipzig, in a middle-class family.
His father Karl owned a pharmacy in the city center, while his mother Johanna was an English teacher.
There were distinguished intellectuals in her family, and among them the scientist Justus von Liebig, also known as the father of organic chemistry, stood out.
Karl Ludvig Herman Long, who was primarily known as Luc, grew up with his brothers and sisters in the countryside, close to the city.
In their large yard, family athletics competitions were usually held.
In 1928, Long began training in athletics at a sports club in Leipzig, and his coach was Georg Richter, who helped him develop a jumping technique that reminded him of high jumpers with his jump, unlike Owens who approached the springboard like a sprinter.
His partnership with Richter proved fruitful, as Long broke the German long jump record in 1933 and became national champion at the age of just 20.
Just a few months before the start of the Games in Berlin, Long set a new European record with a jump of 7,82 meters.
And while both Owens and Long honed their skills on the runway, they were also part of the political momentum off it.
In the United States, pressure and a call for a boycott of the Berlin Games grew in the light of stories about the treatment of Jews in Germany under the new, Nazi regime.
Owens was initially an advocate of boycotting the Games and reportedly told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: "If there are discriminated against minorities in Germany, the United States should withdraw from the competition."
In the end, however, he agreed to listen to the pleas of his coach and to accept the security guarantees of the Olympic Committee of the United States of America, which sent a delegation to Germany to assess the conditions for the competition and to verify the host's policy regarding the participation of Jewish athletes.
And in Germany, the political pressure on the athletes was getting stronger.
"The athletes were representatives of the Third Reich, not free individuals," says Julija Kelner-Long, Luc's only granddaughter.
Long's rise to the national team came in 1933 - the same year Hitler became German Chancellor.
If one could think that he was not aware of what was expected of him, the large banner hanging in the training stadium was completely clear: "Athletes are preparing for the 1936 Olympic Games. We must not disappoint our leader Adolf Hitler."
Hitler was at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin when the long jump finals involving Owens and Long took place.
After an equal fight, in the penultimate series, Long managed to equal Owens' best jump of 7.87 meters, which was enthusiastically accepted by the local fans.
But Owens brought out the best in himself when it was needed the most, so he responded with 7.94 meters and once again took the lead.
Long fouled out on his final attempt, but his performance was good enough to secure a silver medal and Germany's first long jump medal.
Owens, who had already secured first place, further made history with a final jump of 8,06 meters - bettering an Olympic record that stood for the next 24 years.
Long forgot his own failure and instinctively flew into the sand to congratulate his opponent.
In that moment, recorded in time, in an embrace in front of 100.000 spectators at the stadium, Owens confided in his rival: "You made me do my best."
The two managed to improve the Olympic record five times during the competition.
"It was like a fairy tale - so good to jump in that weather," Long said in an interview with local newspaper Neue Leipzig Zeitung.
"I couldn't do anything. I ran into him. I was the first to congratulate him and hug him."
Long's impulsive reaction attracted the attention of the German authorities.
Not long after the Olympics ended, his mother Johanna entered a sentence in her diary about a warning from Rudolf Hess, then the Fuehrer's deputy in the Nazi Party.
She wrote that Long "was ordered from the highest places" never to hug a black person again.
The Nazi regime labeled him as a "racially unconscious" person.
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The hug, it was clear, infuriated the Nazis who often used the photos to reinforce belief in their ideology and now feared that the image of Owens and Long's friendship would shake their propaganda.
In that sense, they were absolutely right.
Nearly 90 years later, Owens and Long's friendship remains one of the most enduring Olympic stories.
"A gesture full of kindness and fair play found its way to the hearts of an entire nation," Kelner-Long said.
"Together, Luc and Jesse achieved a special kind of friendship that day and demonstrated to the world the principle that friendship and respect are the most important things in sports and in life, regardless of skin color and origin."
Stewart Rankin, Owens' only grandchild, equally emphasizes the significance of the act.
"I often say that of all my grandfather's achievements at the 1936 Olympics, the unexpected friendship between him and Luca Longo is the thing I'm most proud of and the thing that impressed me the most," he says.
"For them, that moment of establishing friendship, under such circumstances, in that stadium, in front of Hitler himself, was absolutely phenomenal."
It was the only time Owens and Long competed against each other.
Owens added victories in the long jump and 100 meters to his victories in the 200 meters and the 4x100 meter relay, bringing home four gold medals from the German capital.
At the same time, he angered officials by refusing to compete in Sweden at a meet scheduled immediately after the Games and instead returning home to commercialize his newfound fame.
This decision cost him a ban from competing for the American Athletic Association and it practically ended his sports career.
Owens was still given a championship welcome and a special ceremony that was held in New York, but the incident that happened at the Waldorf Astoria party in his honor only showed that despite all the Olympic glory - nothing has changed.
When he arrived at the hotel, Owens was directed straight from the hotel lobby to a side entrance that was only for merchants and blacks.
It was a bitter reminder of the deep-rooted segregation and racial prejudice that lay at the very heart of American society.
Long left Berlin as a silver Olympian, national champion and European record holder.
He improved that limit of the European record the following year with a jump of 7,90 meters and that record survived until 1956.
However, he could not escape suspicion and additional surveillance.
"Luc's hug in the sand had consequences," says Kelner-Long.
"He was the subject of special surveillance by the authorities, who forced him to behave more cautiously and not stand out."
After the outbreak of World War II, Long stopped competing and instead focused on a career as a lawyer.
His youngest brother Heinrich was killed during the war actions.
Desperate for this loss, Long tried to devote himself to his family.
He married Giselda in 1941, and in November of the same year they had a son - Julia's father - and named him Heinrich, after his murdered brother.
Long was soon drafted into the army and initially given assignments at a safe distance from the front line.
Nevertheless, in 1943, Long was sent by ship to Sicily with his 10th Parachute Anti-Artillery Battery.
A month later, he sent his last letter to Gisela, who at that moment was in an advanced stage of pregnancy with their second son, Wolfgang Matthias.
"In that letter, Luc described staying in a tented camp in a beautiful and peaceful flower meadow surrounded by mountains - and it was his last message to his family," says Kelner-Long.
"The next day, May 30, 1943, Wolfgang was born. Unfortunately, Luc never got to meet him."
Allied troops landed in Sicily on July 10, 1943, as part of the operation to liberate Italy.
Four days later, Long was hit in the leg by shrapnel during the withdrawal of German forces and bled to death.
Gizela received the news about her husband's disappearance on July 30.
He was believed to be dead.
Only seven years later, this fact and the details of his death were confirmed, and his grave was found in the German part of the American military cemetery in Gela.
Owens chose not to enlist in the army during the war, nor was he drafted.
However, since he was banned from athletics, commercial offers slowly began to disappear, so he decided to support his family in an unusual way.
He raced for money by giving local sprinters a 10-20 meter lead at the start.
He won those races with ease.
Also, when there were no human rivals, Owens raced motorcycles, cars and horses.
"People say it was degrading for an Olympic champion to race a horse," Owens said, "but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat those four gold medals."
After such jobs, things began to improve for Owens during the 1950s when he took a job as a motivational speaker.
He also started running his own public relations firm and became quite sought after.
He also began to travel the world as a sports ambassador.
During a 1951 trip to Germany with the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, Owens called the Long family.
He met Kaj and took him to the Globetrotters game in Hamburg as his guest of honor.
In 1964, Kay was part of the documentary Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin, and during that interview the two recreated a photo of Owens and Long lounging and chatting at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin.
"Kai had a tremendous appreciation for Jesse—his charisma, his modesty, and his natural gift and success as an athlete," Kellner-Long says.
Owens was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976.
He died of lung cancer four years later.
He was 66 years old.
He was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal by Congress in 1990. In 2016, President Obama invited Owens' relatives to the White House for a reception that had not been held for him and the other black members of the championship 4x100m relay since the 1936 Berlin Games.
His wife Ruth continued to manage his legacy. She managed the Jesse Owens Foundation before passing that baton to their daughters - Gloria, Marlin and Beverly - and later included five grandchildren.
Over the years, the Owens and Long families have remained in constant contact.
Julia Kellner-Long, along with Owens' grandson Gina, lit the Olympic flame in a special ceremony held at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin in 2004. Then, together with Marlena, she presented the medals to the winners of the long jump trophy at the World Championships in Athletics held in Berlin in 2009.
Kelner-Long and Stuart Rankin became close friends after a chance meeting in Munich in 2012, and recently participated in the filming of a documentary film about their grandfathers.
"The relationship between our two families means a lot to me and I'm proud of that relationship," says Kelner-Long.
"Julia and I often joke and think of our grandfathers and we are very happy that our families are still connected despite the fact that so many years have passed," adds Rankin.
In addition to the real story of the friendship between Owens and Long, which is nurtured by both families, their special relationship has its own specific life on the Internet.
One of the most widespread myths concerns a vivid letter that Long allegedly wrote to Owens in the "blood-soaked sand" of North Africa. In the letter, he urged Owens to return to Germany and find his son if he did not return home himself.
Among other things, the letter says this: "Tell him, Jesse, how it was when we weren't separated by war, tell him how things could work between people in this world."
Unbearably moving, but almost certainly fictional.
Long never participated in the war in North Africa.
No one from the family has ever seen that letter, and everyone at the same time doubts the possibility that such a letter was ever written and sent.
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Regardless, Kelner-Long understands the powerful message that people persistently draw from their story.
"She offers hope and inspiration to all people, all over the world," she says.
"In times where racism is still present, this story is still relevant, more than ever before."
"I think that Luc's example of sportsmanship is what should be highlighted and preserved for all time".
"The relationship between my grandfather and Luca is certainly something that could not have been predicted, but because it did happen, it provided a hopeful perspective for my grandfather, but also for me."
"Luc's strength, his character, cannot be described in words, but in any case it shows that even in the most unexpected places you can still find a glimmer of light and hope".
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