Five other athletes have won back-to-back titles: Wyomia Tyus (1964–68), Carl Lewis (1984–88), Gail Devers (1992–96), Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (2008–12), and Elaine Thompson-Herah (2016–20).

Four of these men were also members of the winning team in the 4 × 100 meters relay at the same games—Jesse Owens (1936), Bobby Morrow (1956), Carl Lewis (1984), and Usain Bolt (2012, 2016).

Three of these men have won a fourth gold medal at the same games—Archie Hahn in the now-defunct 60 metres, and both Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis in the long jump.

Five of these women were also members of the winning team in the 4 × 100 meters relay at the same games—Fanny Blankers-Koen (1948), Betty Cuthbert (1956), Wilma Rudolph (1960), Florence Griffith Joyner (1988) and Elaine Thompson-Herah (2021).

[10] Athletes are seeded by past performance to ensure an even balance of quality across the heats and allow the best runners to progress to the later stages.

Changes to the international false start rules were also introduced – any validly recorded reaction time to the starter's pistol of below 0.1 seconds will result in instant disqualification.

In the 2008 Women's 100 m final the minor medallists Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart could not be separated by this method and were both awarded the silver medal.

[14] Medal positions in a 100 m race have only been shared on one other occasion in Olympic history: Alajos Szokolyi and Francis Lane were joint third at the 1896 men's final.

The 2008 and 2012 editions reversed the historical gender bias towards male participation, as women outnumbered men at the Olympic 100 m for the first time.

The 100 m requires a high level of athleticism and as a result most of the participants in the Olympics are aged between 18 and 35 – which is roughly contiguous with the period of peak physical fitness in humans.

[80][82] Intersex athletes are restricted from competition in the 100 m without having undergone surgery and hormonal therapy, as a result of the 2003 Stockholm consensus ruling by the IOC.

[85] In the 2020 Olympics, Chinese sprinter Su Bingtian ran 9.83 in his semi-final heat and became the first athlete without African heritage to reach the final since 1980 within the span of 40 years, setting an unofficial fastest 60 metres split record en route.

9.83 is also the second-fastest semi-final time and made him the fifth-fastest man in the history of 100 metres at the Olympics, behind Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake, Justin Gatlin and Marcel Jacobs.

Soon after being awarded the gold medal the results of his post-race drug test revealed his urine contained traces of stanozolol (a banned steroid).

[92] The 1988 Olympic men's 100 metres final has been referred to as "the dirtiest race in history", as only two of the eight finalists remained free of doping issues during their careers.

The Greek sprinter and her teammate Kostas Kenteris were convicted of staging a motorcycle crash to avoid the test, but this was overturned on appeal.

[95] Bulgaria's Tezdzhan Naimova had her 2008 Olympic performance annulled and received a two-year ban after it was proved that she had tampered with her drug test a month prior to the competition.

She lied to federal agents and a grand jury during questioning around the scandal, but later admitted in 2007 to using Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) during the period of her Olympic success.

The United States Olympic Committee accepted his claim of inadvertent use, since a dietary supplement he ingested was found to contain "Ma huang", the Chinese name for Ephedra (ephedrine is known to help weight loss).

[106][107] Shelly-Ann Fraser, twice Olympic champion, received a six-month ban in 2010 for taking a prohibited narcotic for pain relief.

[110] A fourth Jamaican medallist, Merlene Ottey, received a ban for the steroid nandrolone in 1999 but this was rescinded on appeal due to laboratory errors.

Further to this standing men's world record for the 100 m has been equalled five times in Olympic competition and improved twice (by Carl Lewis in 1988 with 9.92 and by Bolt in 2008 with 9.69).

The winner of the race is occasionally referred to as "the world's fastest" man or woman, reflecting the high level of the competition and the quality of performances.

[117][118] The standard of performances at the Olympics has progressed in line with the discipline as a whole and the times in the final often rank highly in the end-of-season lists.

Note: Florence Griffith-Joyner ran 10.54 (+3.0) and 10.70 (+2.6) in the finals and semifinals of the 100m at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, however, both were over the legal wind speed limit of +2.0 m/s.

A handicap race attracted 32 athletes from 10 countries and was won by Edmund Minahan, an American semi-finalist in the main 100 m competition, which had taken place five days earlier.

[135] The high-profile nature of 100 m Olympic finals in some countries has served to encourage participation in sport among the wider public, particularly in short sprinting.

[137][138] Owens' 100 m victory at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (one of four gold medals he won over seven days at the games) helped challenge notions of white supremacy that were popular during that era.

[145][146] The 1988 Olympic final, featuring Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis has been the topic of documentaries, including ESPN's "9.79*" from the 30 for 30 series,[147] as well as non-fiction books, such as Richard Moore's The Dirtiest Race in History.

[148] Lewis, Griffith-Joyner, Bolt and Thompson-Herah were also awarded the title of IAAF World Athlete of the Year for their Olympic feats.