Carl Lewis, the American athlete who gulped 9 Olympic gold medals via a range of lengthy bounce, sprints and relay, began out with 4 relatively simple objectives in thoughts. Although intertwined, the 2 of them had little to do with checking out the limits of the observe and box international.
“I wanted to jump 8.90m. I wanted to run the world record (time) in 100m. I wanted to be very rich. I wanted to be very famous,” Lewis mentioned.
“Every day that I went to practice, I had those four things in mind. But I knew that the rich and famous would not happen without the hard work and dedication that it took to be the best athlete.”
It’s the type of psychological championship with which Lewis received gold on the Games of 1984 LA (100m, 200m, lengthy bounce, 4x100m relay), 1988 Seoul (100m, lengthy bounce), 1992 Barcelona (lengthy bounce, 4x100m relay) and 1996 Atlanta (lengthy bounce). The type which, the 61-year-old reckoned, has been in sparse provide within the modern day athlete, resulting in the boys’s lengthy bounce witnessing a plateau lately.
The best possible soar from the ultimate 10 years, Jamaican Tajay Gayle’s 8.69m in 2019, sits tenth within the all-time listing headed via Mike Powell’s 8.95m (Lewis’s 8.87m from the enduring 1991 worlds ultimate is 3rd). Greek Miltiadis Tentoglou turned into the Tokyo Olympics lengthy bounce champion with 8.41m. Wang Jianan’s 8.36m effort made the Chinese ultimate 12 months’s international champion. This season’s best possible bounce thus far rests at 8.42m with India’s Jeswin Aldrin, who were given there previous this month breaking M Sreeshankar’s nationwide report on the Throws and Jumps Competition in Ballari.
The two Indians are taking some massive strides within the lengthy bounce, even supposing the inconsistency plague noticed them oscillate between the great (Jeswin’s 8.37m, Sreeshankar’s CWG silver) and the gloom (below-par worlds) ultimate season. Lewis, although, believes it is not simply an Indian factor however an total drop within the requirements of probably the most technical observe and box occasions.
“I would not say it’s just with the Indian guys, the long jump inconsistency is everywhere in the world. And it is frustrating,” Lewis mentioned at the sidelines of the Indian Sports Honors awards right here on Thursday.
“Firstly, we have to talk about the challenges of the event—it’s the most difficult of all track and field events—that people are not respecting. Secondly, I talk to so many young people and they say that we are not trying to jump 8.80m. That is their mindset. They just accept where they are. We were in an era where I wanted to jump over 8.90m, and the others in order to win had to do better than that. Now they have accepted to jump whatever distances there are,” added Lewis, who additionally jumped a wind-assisted 8.91m in that 1991 Tokyo duel with Powell.
Currently into training as the top of the University of Houston’s athletics program, Lewis places it all the way down to the fast-changing “era of social media”. We’re additionally within the post-Usain Bolt generation, the place sprinting is not a showman’s trade. A in large part unheralded Italian (Marcell Jacobs) blazed to a 100m triumph clocking 9.80s on the Tokyo Olympics, the place a Chinese (Su Bingtian) too completed 6th at 9.98s. The Americans headlined via Fred Kerley and Noah Lyles engineered the 100m-200m sweep on the worlds ultimate 12 months.
“One of the problems that we as a sport have had is that we don’t look at it in totality. We are always trying to find a star. Track and field is not a sport that can afford to do that,” Lewis mentioned. . “I think what is happening now is good. There is a lot of competition (in sprints) and you are not certain who is going to win. But if you have that one person, whoever that is, they have to care about the sport and sacrifice to make the sport better for everyone else and not just for themselves.”