How old is carl lewis

Carl Lewis is now a full-time assistant coach at the University of Houston. Events Long Jump - 8. Back to Athlete Bios. Carl Lewis Hall of Fame Inductee. Basic Information Gender: Male. Residences Hometown: Birmingham, Alabama. By Lewis had won eight world championship gold medals and had owned the long jump for ten years. Age began to take its toll on him, however. He watched Mike Powell break Bob Beamon's outdoor long jump world record at the world championships in Tokyo, Japan.

Lewis made four personal best jumps at the same meet but still could not beat Powell. At the Olympic trials, Lewis failed to make the cut for the meter and meter sprints. He did qualify for the long jump and the meter relay, and a week later he discovered that he had been suffering from a sinus a cavity in the skull connected to the nostrils infection. Lewis experienced something at the Olympic trials that he had never received—total acceptance from an American crowd.

He was given a standing ovation in New Orleans, Louisiana, as his second-place finish in the long jump qualified him for an Olympic berth. The admiration of fans came showering down in Barcelona, Spain, in , when Lewis beat Powell in the long jump to earn his seventh gold medal and then anchored the meter relay for his eighth.

Following the Olympics, Lewis's performance began to decline, and by he was being beaten regularly by younger athletes. Still, Lewis participated in the Olympic trials and won a chance to compete in the long jump at the games in Atlanta, Georgia.

He easily won his fourth straight gold in the event. With endorsement contracts from Panasonic, among others, and large personal appearance fees, he became a wealthy man and considered running for political office in Houston, Texas. In Lewis was named one of the century's greatest athletes at the Sports Illustrated 20th Century Sports Awards ceremony. In he said he still felt he could compete at the Olympic trials but would not do so until the problem of athletes using drugs was addressed.

He still attended the games in Sydney, Australia, participating in a ceremony to honor the McDonald's Olympic Achievers, young people from around the world chosen for their success in school-work, athletics, and community service. He also tried acting, appearing in the television movie Atomic Twister.

Eight of Lewis's Olympic gold medals are still in his possession. The ninth—his first, for the meter sprint—was buried with his father Bill in May of Coffey, Wayne. The grueling demands of sprinting, long jumping, and relays demand youth and vigor.

Lewis has defied not only the stopwatch but the march of time and has become, in the words of fellow athlete Mike Powell in Sports Illustrated, "the best track and field athlete ever.

Lewis is the first athlete since Jesse Owens to win four gold medals in track during the same Olympic Games. The circumstances surrounding those victories were very different, however. Owens returned to the United States in a national hero and retired from competition. Lewis, on the other hand, received boos from the crowd at the Olympics and earned a cold shoulder from big business and fans alike. The rough treatment he received—stemming, he has claimed, from unfair press coverage—only sharpened his resolve to continue competing.

From through he sprinted and jumped on a world-class level, as ever-younger opponents gnawed at his heels. He was, by any measurement, the greatest track-and-field athlete of all time, yet Americans refused to warm to him. He won four gold medals at Los Angeles, yet he emerged from the [] Games less popular than he was before they began. The public found him arrogant and overly calculating in his attempts to cash in on his victories in a supposedly amateur sport.

The athlete "has become revered, as much for his longevity as for anything else. His father, Bill, ran track and played football; his mother, Evelyn, was a world-class hurdler who represented the United States at the Pan-American Games.

By the time Carl was born, the third of four children, the elder Lewises were coaching young athletes in track and field events. When Carl was still a youngster, his family moved to Willingboro, New Jersey. There his parents worked as high school teachers and founded the Willingboro Track Club. Ray Didinger noted in a Philadelphia Daily News profile that Lewis's parents considered their youngest son "the third-best athlete in a family of four" and encouraged him to pursue music lessons instead.

Carl had other ideas. He went out into his back yard, measured off twenty-nine feet, two-and-a-half inches, and stuck a strip of tape on the ground. The distance was one that even the world's best athletes could not meet, but young Carl Lewis began jumping toward it with singular determination.

There was nothing flighty about him. Some kids want to be a fireman one day, a movie star the next. Carl set his mind on track and that was it.

He said he wanted to be the best, period. Striving to pass his older brothers Mack and Cleve—and even his younger sister Carol—Lewis began high school predicting that he would achieve a distance of 25 feet in the long jump. Skinny and small, he lost far more meets than he won. Being around my parents and the club helped a lot.

But I knew, in the final analysis, it was up to me. I did 18 years of track and field and I've been retired for five years, and they're still talking about me, so I guess I still have it. Around that same time, Sports Illustrated named the retired star its "Olympian of the Century," while the International Olympic Committee named him its "Sportsman of the Century. We strive for accuracy and fairness.

If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. His long jump world record stood for 25 years. Carl Sagan was one of the most well-known scientists of the s and s. He studied extraterrestrial intelligence, advocated for nuclear disarmament and co-wrote and hosted 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.

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