LEWIS, Frederick Carlton ("Carl")

(b. 1 July 1961 in Birmingham, Alabama), track-and-field competitor and nine-time Olympic gold medalist in short distance running events and the long jump, who is considered by many experts to be one of the greatest athletes of all time.

Carl Lewis was born to a family of athletes. His parents, William McKinley Lewis and Evelyn Lawler Lewis, were both track stars at the Tuskegee Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, during the late 1940s. The couple married after graduation and went on to careers as schoolteachers and civil rights activists while raising four children. In 1963 when Carl was still an infant, they moved the family to Willingboro, New Jersey, a suburb near Philadelphia, where both parents taught at local public schools. In his autobiography, Inside Track, Lewis paints a picture of an idyllic childhood: "We settled in a four-bedroom house with a large backyard. We were another middle-class American family, going to church, playing Little League, getting to know the neighbors, talking and laughing around the dinner table."

Lewis's parents, however, were unhappy with the limited opportunities that the schools district afforded young runners—the schools had no girls' track teams—and in 1969 they founded the coeducational Willingboro Track Club, which they developed into a regional power in novice competition. Consequently, Lewis quite literally grew up on a running track, calling the long-jump sawdust pit his "baby-sitter." Lewis attended Willingboro High School, graduating in 1979.

By the age of sixteen Lewis already showed evidence of world-class potential. He frequently made long jumps of more than 25 feet, less than 5 feet short of a world record, and he ran the 100-yard dash in under 9.3 seconds. He was widely sought after by collegiate track powers, including Villanova in nearby Philadelphia, but chose the University of Houston, principally to work with Cougars coach Tom Tellez, whom he admired for his scientifically based approach to training.

As a student at Houston, Lewis became a national track figure. In his sophomore year, he logged a string of impressive victories. These included two titles at the 1981 Southwest Conference Indoor Championships: the long jump, where he registered 27 feet, 10.75 inches, the fourth best jump in history; and the 60-yard dash at a time of 6.06 seconds, just .02 seconds short of the standing world record. In recognition of his achievements, he received the James E. Sullivan Award as Best Amateur Athlete and was named the Associated Press Athlete of the Year.

Given what he had already accomplished, and his family's credentials in the track world, Lewis seemed all but a prince heading toward his coronation as a national champion and hero. However, he began to assert himself publicly in ways that upset the conservative and often hypocritical establishment of what used to be called, often with a grain of salt, "amateur athletics." Although he would continue to work with Coach Tellez throughout his career, Lewis refused to keep up the pretense that he was simply a student member of a college track team, which was the preferred way of maintaining one's "amateur" standing at the time. He stopped attending classes in 1981 at the end of his sophomore year and began to compete in international track meets, openly accepting the backing of commercial sponsors. Texas Monthly reported that the twenty-year-old began receiving endorsement fees of up to $65,000 from Nike just for wearing the company's shoes. Although this kind of arrangement has since become commonplace for rising young Olympic superstars, it provoked much resentment from Lewis's contemporaries.

From this point on, Lewis's career can be followed by a trail of controversial actions, decisions, and words that run parallel to his remarkable achievements. His first Olympic competition, the 1984 Los Angeles Games, is a good example of this. The young athlete stunned the world with a series of remarkable performances, winning four gold medals in track-and-field events (long jump, 100-and 200-meter races, and 4 × 100 relay), thus equaling the record set by Jesse Owens in 1936. Yet even while making sports history, Lewis managed to alienate many of the 80,000 fans at the Los Angeles Coliseum for the long-jump competition.

In the finals of the event, Lewis made a first jump of 28 feet, .25 inches, a distance so much greater than any of the other competitors had ever recorded that he decided to pass on his next four attempts in order to conserve himself for the sprints. Even though Lewis won the medal easily on the strength of that jump, the crowd wanted to see him attempt to break the world record, and they let him know it by booing him roundly. According to sportswriter Skip Hollandsworth, "By the time the Olympics were over, he was being called arrogant and greedy, the Maria Callas of the Cinders."

Rumors about Lewis's sexuality have dogged him for much of his career. Whispers concerning homosexuality have been so widespread that the athlete felt the need to address the issue in his 1990 autobiography. He claims no prejudice against homosexuals, but denies being homosexual himself, attributing much of the rumor mongering to "a woman who had been in bed with me enough times to know I was not gay." According to Lewis's account, he refused to marry her and broke off their relationship, leading her to seek revenge. He also believes the falsehood was perpetuated as revenge by athletes who resented or feared his public denunciations of anabolic steroid use and his advocacy of effective drug testing.

Regarding the latter, in his personal campaign to rid the sport of performance-enhancing drugs, he even went so far as to publicly "name names" of athletes as users. Among those he charged was one of the most respected figures in U.S. track, sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner. These accusations put Lewis in the midst of another swirl of controversy and recrimination. Given his stance on the issue, it is no small irony that one of his nine Olympic gold medals was awarded to him after Canadian Ben Johnson, who had actually beaten him in 1988 in the 100-meter sprint, tested positive for steroids.

Poised, articulate, and strikingly handsome, Lewis made no secret of his desire to use sports as a stepping-stone toward a career in entertainment. In 1986 he recorded Break It Up, his debut as a singer. Although the album failed to catch on in the United States, it was a bestseller in the Scandinavian countries, where the African American athlete, sporting his distinctive buzz cut hairstyle, briefly achieved the status of a pop idol. In general, though, Lewis has had little success as a singer or actor. At the height of his celebrity in the late 1980s he could only manage several bit parts in feature films; later he appeared as a guest panelist on television game shows, including Hollywood Squares and Sports Geniuses.

Controversies and dubious forays into the entertainment world aside, Lewis emerged from the 1984 Olympics as one the world's premier athletes. He was voted into the Olympic Hall of Fame less than a year later. At the 1988 Games in Seoul, Lewis once again took gold in the long jump and 100 meters, as well as a silver medal in the 200 meters. Track and Field News declared Lewis its "World Athlete of the Decade" for the 1980s.

In 1991, at the ripe old sprinter's age of thirty, Lewis showed the track world that he was still at the height of his powers by breaking the world record in the 100-meter dash with a time of 9.86 seconds. This is just one of many world records Lewis holds in his various events. Sometimes overshadowed by his reputation as a "hot dog" out for individual glory is the fact that Lewis broke world records in the anchor leg of the 4 × 100-meter relay five times between 1981 and 1991. One record, however, eluded him. Even during his many years as the undisputed king of the long jump, he was never able to equal Bob Beamon's 1968 outdoor record jump of 29 feet, 2.5 inches. Perhaps Lewis's most impressive mark, especially given the circumstances under which he achieved it, is his total of nine lifetime Olympic gold medals in track and field, a record he shares with the 1920 Olympics star Paavo Nurmi of Norway.

Lewis went into the 1996 Olympics at thirty-five years of age with eight gold medals, but he just barely made the team. Although his string of sixty-five straight world-class competition long-jump victories had ended back in 1991, Lewis still believed he could win the event. Working with his coaches Tom Tellez and Joe Douglass at the Santa Monica Track Club, he took up an intense program of weight training, which had not been necessary in his younger days, while adhering to a strict vegetarian diet. Much to the unambiguous delight of the Atlanta crowd, Lewis took his ninth gold on his final attempt with a jump of just under twenty-eight feet. Even some of his harshest critics could not resist cheering. "Things have a way of coming back around. Don't they?" Lewis told a reporter with undisguised relish.

Lewis officially retired as a competitor in 1997. He chose a Berlin appearance for his last competition, probably as a thank-you to European track fans, with whom he has always been particularly popular. He thrilled the crowd with a winning effort in the anchor leg of the 4 × 100 relay. In an interview with the Washington Post following the meet, Lewis remained true to form, using the opportunity to castigate Primo Nebiolo, head of the International Track and Field Federation, as well as other officials, for their dictatorial style and for "losing the public's trust." Noting a recent public opinion survey that identified the five most popular athletes in the sport (a list that included himself), Lewis said, "Not one of us is under thirty years of age. If the public does not care much for the younger stars, that in itself should tell you that the future of track and field is in serious trouble." Lewis was voted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame on 30 November 2001.

Lewis lives in Los Angeles. In 1999 he launched a clothing line of up-market sportswear, and he continues to make commercial endorsements and pursue possibilities in the entertainment field.

Lewis has written two books with collaborator Jeffrey Marx: Inside Track (1990), an autobiography that includes the Olympic star's views on many of the controversies that have surrounded him, and One More Victory Lap (1996), a "personal diary" in which he recorded his preparations for, and competition in, the Atlanta Games. A rich profile of Lewis, "Athlete of the Century: Carl Lewis," written by Skip Hollandsworth, appears in Texas Monthly (Dec. 1999).

David Marc