Mark Maloney on sports

In addition to a gold medal, the Olympic champion in the decathlon earns the unofficial title of World’s Greatest Athlete.

Tuesday, Olympic champion Bryan Clay added another distinction: 2008 Jesse Owens Award winner.

Clay and discus-thrower Stephanie Brown Trafton were named by USA Track & Field as the male and female winners of the Owens Award. The Owens is USATF’s highest honor, presented annually to the outstanding U.S. male and female track and field athletes. The 2008 awards will be presented Dec. 6 during the Jesse Owens Awards and Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, held in conjunction with USATF’s annual meeting, at Reno, Nev.

Clay captured the World Indoor Championships heptathlon gold medal with a personal best of 6,371 points. He won silver medals in 2004 and 2006.

Outdoors, the 2004 Olympic silver-medalist set a U.S. Olympic Trials record of 8,832 points at Eugene, Ore. That was the best total by an American in 16 years and best in the world over four years.

At the Beijing Olympics, he led after every event en route to scoring 8,791 points and becoming the first American to win Olympic gold in the decathlon since Dan O’Brien in 1996. His winning margin of 240 points was the greatest winning margin in the Olympics since 1972.

Brown Trafton is the first women’s thrower to win the Owens Award. She had never won a national title, let alone an international gold.

After placing third at the Olympic Trials, Brown Trafton led the qualifying round at Beijing with her first toss, 212 feet, 5 inches (64.74 meters). From there, she went on to win the gold medal — the first by an American woman in the discus since Lillian Copeland in 1932 and the first medal of any kind by an American since Leslie Jean Deniz’s silver in 1984.

Brown Trafton had three of the top four marks by an American in 2008, including a personal-best 217-1 (66.17) on May 8.