A worldwide audience watched as Mainer Steve Elliott leaped over the stands at the Montreal Olympics in 1976, dashed across the infield, and handed the American flag to Bruce Jenner. But for 20 years, nobody – including Jenner – ever learned who he was… until now.

Ever heard of Moon Mondschein? Nicolae Avilov? No? They’re two of the greatest decathletes in the history of track and field. You might not have heard of Bruce Jenner, either, had it not been for a single American flag. It was an image that clicked – Jenner waving the Stars & Stripes after winning the 1976 Olympic decathlon in Montreal in front of a cheering crowd of 70,000.

Jenner wound up on the cover of the Wheaties box, and the flag followed him there, too. Now, it’s easier to imagine Dorothy Lamour without her sarong than it is to picture Jenner without that flag. But who was the mystery man who dropped 12 feet down the stadium wall, rushed across the infield with a comic line of 40 Olympic officials chasing him, and became a footnote to history by saying, “Take the flag, take the flag” as he thrust the scrap of polyester bunting into Bruce Jenner’s hands?

“He just disappeared,” Jenner says. “I wish there were some way for me to thank him. It was one single incredible moment, and oddly, this unidentified young guy was there to share it with me.”

Bruce Jenner, 46, of Beverly Hills, California, meet Steve Elliott, 43, of Ellsworth, Maine. Jenner’s on cable 24 hours a day doing sports infomercials that eclipse those of even Cher, while Elliott lives a world apart, a landscape designer in Maine’s lobster country who flattens apples during the off months.

“My uncle and aunt got hold of some tickets for the Games in 1976, and was I thrilled,” Elliott says. “We stayed in a trailer park and visited the Olympic Village everyday. ”

“The Olympics were more than you could talk about. We walked around Montreal’s immense stadium and it was gorgeous, such a unique design. You’d walk 20 feet and hear 3 or 4 different languages. We were part of something bigger than all of us. I’ll never forget that feeling.

“We stayed for the whole track and field week. Everything built up to the decathlon, and now Bruce Jenner had reached the final event. He jumped higher and ran faster than he’d ever dreamed of, and now he was running the 1,500 meters and about to win the Olympic decathlon.

“As he entered his last lap, over 70,000 people went wild around me.” The roar almost tipped over the stadium. Sensitive Olympic instruments measured the track going up and down from the deafening sound, and all of a sudden Elliott amazed himself by shouting, “I’m going down there and run the victory lap with him.”

“To this day I can’t explain what came over me,” he says. The Olympics were exploding like a shaken beer, and Steve Elliott was spilling over the edge with the foam.

“Don’t be ridiculous,’ my aunt said.

“A man just below us waved a large, two-piece American flag, and I asked him if I could take it down to Jenner.’

“No,’ he said. ‘I’m going myself!’

“Then a lady across the aisle, part of a family waving little flags, said, ‘You can take one of ours. We live in Connecticut just down the road from Newtown, where Bruce grew up.’

“Thanking her, I grabbed it and maneuvered down through the crowd toward the track. Bruce was on the straightaway now. If he finished in the top three, he’d win the gold-and he was doing it! In fact, he was moving into second, and was challenging for first! Just as he broke around the corner for the final sprint, I jumped over the side. It was a 12-foot fall. I hadn’t thought about that. Whump. I thought everybody was going over, too, but when I wound up on the track and looked up, I was stunned. I didn’t think I’d be down here alone!” It was as if he’d broken into Buckingham Palace. “The whole perimeter was lined with guards. I hadn’t thought about that, either. I took off, as fast as I could. I’d been a quartermiler at the University of Maine at Orono, so I led a chase of guards from all nations following me out onto the infield like a stream of bees out of a hole. I ran over the high-jump pit and felt a guy float past me in slow motion, trying to give me a flying tackle, but I sidestepped him. It was the race of my life, too. The whole finish line was just surrounded, and they closed in on Bruce as he crossed. I was running wide open. As Jenner got there, he was still coming to a stop. He emerged from the group of the people and thrust his arms in the air, just pumping them, and he tossed his head like a stallion.

“Maybe nobody should have seen what I saw next. It was an enormously private moment. Certainly there were no cameras there.

“You could see something happening to the guy. He roared and threw both arms in the air, and the crowd went nuts. He’d won the Olympic decathlon!

“I’d never heard a roar like that. It lifted us off the ground. This guy was the best athlete in the world, and he was an American.

“‘Congratulations, Bruce. Take the flag, take the flag.’ I just looked up at him. All I could remember was these huge armpits. To my 5’8″, he was enormous. You could see the whites of his eyes, like horses’ eyes, and something else-he was alarmed. He looked beyond me for a second and grabbed the flag a moment before a guard crashed into me. A man with a French accent cranked my arm behind my back and lifted me onto my toes. He said, ‘You’re really lucky. When I was younger I could outrun anyone on this field.’ Then a British guy said, ‘It’s all right, son. Nobody’s going to hurt you.’ But they were too late. Jenner already had the flag and was beginning to run around the track. As I was marched through the tunnel a group of Finnish guys on the other side reached encouragingly out and slapped me on the back. I was taken straight to jail in a paddy wagon.”

Once there, Montreal officials questioned Elliott in French. “I knew a little, so I could see that they wrote down silly things like, ‘Blue pants, blue shirt.’ They released me in less than an hour, and I went back to the trailer park and home with my uncle and aunt. What I’d done didn’t seem real, even though I was on film they replayed for days. I can’t imagine the power it must have taken to pull me out there now that I look back on it. There’s a funny side note to this: Since I was a little boy, I’d collected Wheaties boxes featuring all kinds of athletes. And on one of the boxes now they showed my arm extending the flag to Bruce. I was edited out of the later boxes, but the flag was still there.

“On the original Wheaties commercial, it kind of showed me from behind, shooting from the high-jump pit to the finish line. I ‘appeared’ in Sports Illustrated, on the national wire services, and on Johnny Carson a couple of times, too. Friends at home who didn’t believe me got to see it at that point.”

Then Elliott, quiet Mainer that he is, went home and went to work.

Jenner Remembers “When I crossed the finish line, all kinds of things were going through my mind. Obviously, I was very tired. My hands went into the air and I screamed so bloody loud I thought I broke my vocal chords. It’s yours. Nobody can ever take it away from you. I didn’t care about the rest of my life! But the moment had a bittersweet side to it, too. It was very exciting to win, but it was over. It was very sad, because it was my final competition, like walking away from my best friend. Then as I slowed down, the next thing that flashed into my mind was something absolutely ridiculous.

“You blew the picture. “In the Munich Olympics in 1972, a European photographer had taken an award-winning picture of me as I won my heat in the 1,500.It was black and white, the hair kind of flowing, the look on the face, the lighting. He won European awards for this thing, and he sent me a copy of it, which I tacked up on the wall. For three years I looked at this picture, with my head looking up at the sky, and I dreamed of winning in 1976 that same way. I want that last stride, I told myself while training night and day. I want to have the last step of the 1976 Games.” But life doesn’t work that way. “When real life kicked in, my mouth was wide open in ’76 and I kind of stumbled through the final step. I’d visualized this athlete coming through, his hair behind his head, and now that it was me I was slowing down and thinking, ‘I just blew it!’ For years I’d visualized every thing I’d do in that stadium, every throw, every step. I was dumbfounded that real life would play such a trick on me. Laughing, I realized, that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever thought. Big guy, you’ve just won the Games, and you’re thinking about the picture.”

Then Jenner felt his future tapping him on the back. It was Steve Elliott.

“Creating a spectacle was the last thing I would have done,” Jenner says.

“It just wasn’t my style. I honestly paid no attention to him, but he kept tapping my shoulder and putting the flag literally into my face. Next thing I knew I had that flag in my hand. I lifted it in the air and the crowd let out a tremendous roar. Then I lowered it. I lifted it one more time and started my victory lap.” For one instant, Elliott and Jenner were connected-both fan and star needle and thread to the spangle of history.

“That moment changed the Games,” Jenner says. “Bango. I had that flag in my hand. It really started something.”

“I still can’t believe I went out there,” Elliott says. “A friend at school who saw it on TV said it was like ‘bagging a deer on the King’s land.’ But that moment I intruded upon Bruce – I’ve had little flashes of it since then, on a much, much, much smaller scale over the last 20 years. Talk about a brush with fame! I wondered if I’d ever feel as good as Bruce did.

“You see, I press cider.” Elliott pauses as if no more explanation is necessary. “My moments are quieter. People don’t often rush up here to hand me flags. But there are days when I just nail the cider with the perfect tartness, and it’s truly the best in the world. That’s when I get a little of that chill of the perfect moment. When the blend’s just right, and it’s cooled just right, it’s the best cider in Maine and maybe in New England. Maybe it’s the best there is. We do all our cider by hand. Last year we pressed 8,600 gallons.”

Hearing this, Jenner bursts into laughter, and Elliott shakes his head, too, at the coincidence. Jenner’s winning decathlon total in 1976 was a world record 8,618.