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The
wind stopped blowing on the best-loved son. Carl Lewis, the undying champion
of world's athletics, laid down his arms.
It
happened when the past season was about to end. Officially, with Berlin's
meeting, August 1997. Emotionally, in Houston in September, in his stadium
and surrounded by his people, where Lewis ran a symbolic relay race with
his friends of the Santa Monica, the Californian club where he grew up.
Only now, however, with the new athletics season about to start, are we
really aware of the huge emptiness this sprinter - jumper's farewell left.
Nostalgia is still held in check now; indoor meetings have always been
snobbed by the great champion born in Birmingham, Alabama. When the great
outdoor track events start again in April, ignoring the cumbersome shadow
of his absence will not be possible. Cumbersome not only in terms of sport
numbers.
Lewis
was not only an outstanding sport figure. Athletics, just like other Olympic
sports, gains momentum only when it is made by men who can associate great
exploits to other charismatic characteristics outside the sports ground.
Michael Jordan, Cassius Clay, Ronaldo and even our Alberto Tomba, are but
some of the fellow-travellers of the “Child of the wind”, as Carl is frequently
nicknamed. People who manage to play a key role even and chiefly thanks
to the exposure of their promotional image. If Lewis's first work has actually
come to an end, now a second is about to start: the one that might make
his myth immortal. His sporting longevity reached unusual levels even for
today's time when an athlete's life expectancy may last surprisingly longer.
Lewis, however, knew how to associate it with ethical stands which have
frequently been closely examined. But there is more; near the exacting
and stubborn record-chaser, there also was the testimonial of multi-millionaire
striking advertising campaigns. “King Carl” springing in New York with
deftness from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building will continue
to be remembered by many fans. Just like a French car-making company's
idea of dragging him to the Mexican monastery of Queretaro, dress him up
like a friar and put him inside one of its cars. Trying to count the zeroes
that make up the remuneration for such advertisements would be useless.
It would be much easier instead to tell of the competitive treasure of
the 37-year old black athlete both as a sprinter and as a broad jumper
who won a good 9 golds and one silver at the Olympic games and even 8 golds,
1 silver, and one bronze in the World Championship, not to mention the
world records he set, although he never paid much attention to them.
The
king of world athletics succeeded in breaking and bettering the 100 metres
record four times between the eighties and the nineties, the 4x100 relay
race six times and the long jump three times. The appointments with history
in his life began at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984. He won the
gold medal at his first jump.
He
gave an encore in Seoul in 1988 in a competition which started only one
hour after the end of the 200 heats in which he obviously had participated.
But the astonishing record actually belongs to this sport. Four victories
in a row in the long jump at the Olympic games are an unprecedented exploit
for a sport where no one ever managed to win more than once.
His
last great achievement took place in Atlanta two years ago. The trials
confirmed his fading as a sprinter but allowed him to be on the stage the
Alabama' phenomenon loved so much. There was a mixture of irony, scepticism
and human wickedness, that people show only for the greatest figures who
strike home, in the comments that followed the deeply-felt qualification
for the 1996 Olympic Games. But the Italian night on July 29, at 20:12
local time, marked Carl Lewis's jump towards sport immortality. His 8.50m
jump has not yet been surpassed by Bexckford, Powell, Pedroso and Green.
That
was the last splendid exploit we were given by the former thin, shy and
stammering Birmingham teen-ager that seven centimetres in three months
allowed to be recruited by New Jersey's Willingboro High School before
becoming an undisputed champion. He wanted to astonish everybody and managed
to do so.
Only
Hillary Clinton, one of his illustrious fans, believed he would make it
again and sent him a message wishing him good luck.
The
story of the sport face known all around the world ends here. He had a
lump in the throat, however, when he went to the old Berlin Olympic Stadium,
during the farewell meeting, with over 50 thousand people calling his name
aloud. Any regrets? “Only one: not having left any heirs. But maybe it's
got to be like this. You can't have everything in life”.
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