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[[2 images-trophy and photo]]

Carl Lewis
1985 JESSE OWENS
International Trophy Award Winner

Carl Lewis' problems are that he is too good and too different.  He wins his competitions too easily, and he won every time he competed in 1984.  And in a society that wants its heroes to conform, he dares to be different, living well, dressing mod and saying what is on his mind.

He was in a no-win situation last summer in the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. If he won four gold medals, as he did, he knew people would say, "Well, why shouldn't he win four. He's that good." If he failed to win four gold medals, he knew people would say, "See I told you he wasn't that good."

In other words, Carl Lewis is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Fortunately for him, he understands that and lives with it and doesn't allow it to affect him.

He should have won a fifth gold medal in the Olympics just for surviving an onslaught from the American press corps. The foreign press treated him fairly. But few of the American writers understood track and field, and few understood the physical and psychological hazards of running 11 races and taking between two and nine long jumps, all within nine days.

"I was accused of being aloof and arrogant," said Lewis. "Some people said that everything I did was calculated. Even after I won the 100-meter dash and ran to the stands and grabbed a flag to run around the track with, some reporters wrote that this was calculated.

"Look, I've always been exuberant, maybe even a showboat, and when I grabbed the flag it was spontaneous. The guy I took it from said later that he thought I was just coming over to shake his hand."

In the Olympic long-jump final, Lewis was booed by spectators upset that he had taken only two of his six jumps. People who paid $60 a ticket apparently felt they were entitled to all six jumps.

Most of the people understood little about track and field. They forgot that Lewis had run the 200-meter semifinals and final that night. They had no way of knowing that his hamstring muscle had tightened in the cold air, and one more jump might have caused an injury that would have ended his chances for his last two gold medals. And most of all, they may not have realized that no one was going to beat him in the long jump.

What Lewis did was prudent. It also was what he had done in most meets. Seldom does he take all six jumps. He is usually so far ahead of the opposition that he doesn't have to.

Now, six months after the Olympics, Carl Lewis is getting the recognition he deserves. Tonight, he receives the Jesse Owens International Amateur Athlete Award, most appropriate because Jesse Owens was his childhood hero and because Lewis won his gold medals in Los Angeles in the same events in which Jesse Owens won his four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The Associated Press chose Lewis as 1984's male athlete of the year for the second straight year, a double achieved previously only by tennis star Don Budge (1937-38) and golfer Byron Nelson (1944-45). Track and Field News named him the sport's male athlete of the year for the third straight year.

At age 23, his place in track and field history is secure. He has long jumped 28 feet, 10 1/4 inches outdoors, a distance bettered only by Bob Beamon's world record of 29 feet, 2 1/2 inches.  Beamon set the record in the 1968 Olympics in the thinner air of Mexico City's 1 1/2-mile altitude. Thinner air means less wind resistance, and therefore longer jumps.

Except for Beamon's jump, Lewis owns nine of the longest outdoor jumps in history. He has run two of the three fastest 200-meter dashes in history, and his time of 19.75 seconds is the fastest ever at non-altitude. His 100-meter best of 9.97 seconds is a hundreth of a second slower than the fastest ever at non-altitude.

The performance that impressed Lewis the most in 1984 did not come in the Olympics. Instead, it was his world indoor record of 28-10-1/4 in the long jump at the Wanamaker Millrose Games in New York's Madison Square Garden.

It came on a short runway. It came on his sixth and final jump. It came when he trailed Larry Myricks and was headed for defeat. Bert Nelson, the editor of Track and Field News, called it the greatest long jump in history, indoors or outdoors.

But that was one jump on one night. The Olympics were nine days filled with opportunities to fail. Lewis never failed.

"The Olympic Games definitely were the most special thing in my life," he said. "Everything worked out and made me very happy...I won the four gold medals I had set out to win. And I wouldn't have changed anything."

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