Carl Lewis won Olympic long jump gold, then got booed for stopping
At the 1984 Los Angeles Games, Carl Lewis won the long jump with his very first leap of 8.54 metres, fouled once, then passed on his remaining four attempts. The crowd, promised a run at Bob Beamon's famous record, booed him. Lewis shrugged it off, saying people simply wanted to see more of him.
His caution had a purpose. Lewis still had the 200 metres and the sprint relay ahead, and overexerting on a cool day risked an injury that could wreck his bid to match Jesse Owens, who took four golds in Berlin in 1936. He had already won the 100 metres in 9.99 seconds. He then took the 200 in an Olympic record of 19.80 and anchored the relay to a world record of 37.83, completing the set.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, on 1 July 1961, Lewis grew up in a sporting household in Willingboro, New Jersey. His mother had hurdled for the 1951 Pan-American team, his parents ran a local athletics club, and his sister Carol became an elite long jumper herself. At the University of Houston he found Tom Tellez, who coached him for the rest of his career and reworked his technique so he could jump despite a painful knee. He made the 1980 Olympic team, but the American boycott kept him out of Moscow.
Lewis was fussy about where records counted. Every standing men's 100 metres, 200 metres and long jump record at the time had been set in the thin air of Mexico City, and he refused to chase marks at altitude, not wanting the letter A beside his name. In 1983 he ran 9.97 in Modesto, the first sub-10 100 metres at low altitude, and at the first World Championships in Helsinki he won the long jump and 100 metres and anchored a world-record relay.
Across a career running from 1979 to 1996 he collected nine Olympic golds, winning the long jump at four straight Games, a feat in one athletics event he shares only with discus thrower Al Oerter. He once went 65 long jump competitions unbeaten over a decade. The IAAF later named him World Athlete of the Century, and he went on to coach track at Houston.
Source: Carl Lewis
