Insight into the personality of its translator, Corredor magazine spent a whole morning with Carl Lewis during his visit to Madrid with the help of the Sanitas Foundation.
At 61 years old, the best athlete of the 20th century continues to arouse as great interest in the media as the resistance that his supernatural body seems to offer over time. Living history of the best era of athletics, the sprinter jumper of inconceivable plasticity and former world record holder, the man who has nine Olympic gold medals (plus eight world championships) and who set records of 9.86 in 100 m, 19.75 in 200 m, 8.87 meters in length and 37.40 seconds in 4×100 m continues to be talkative. And with sincerity as his flag, he does not shy away from any topic.
During October 26 and 27, Carl Lewis visited Madrid within the framework of an event organized by the Sanitas Foundation in support of the development of inclusivity in sport, the Inclusive Sports Night, where the eternal Olympic champion served as ambassador alongside to the Paralympic swimmer Teresa Perales to shine the light on the initiative to hold the second Inclusive Games in 2024, after the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris. The gala was a success, fueled by the overflowing sympathy of his godfather and godmother. But first, throughout the first part of the day, the American myth spoke with several media outlets, one after another, and in between he diligently posed in a photo session. The exceptional witness for everything he said was his interpreter for the occasion.
A marathon day for a sprinter?
Yes, forced by the elements. A medical emergency for a passenger on board his plane led to a monumental delay at Frankfurt airport. Result: he landed in Madrid at the end of the afternoon on October 26 and not at the beginning of the morning. Consequence: His appointment with the media was reconvened the next day.
Center of the Chamberí neighborhood, 8:45 am. The interpreter has already been in a mess for fifteen minutes when Frederick Carlton Lewis (Birmingham, Alabama, USA, 1961) appears at the Espacio Cenital photography studio to give his first interview, specifically to El País Semanal. The print is capital letters. Fiction would tell you that the former nine-time Olympic champion and eight-time world champion has just emerged from the Cocoon pool, reality confirms that 61 years is barely a breath in his immortal existence, marked by the grace of his movements and muscles, explosive elongation and inconceivable flexibility, as demonstrated in the staging of his stride in the subsequent photo session. Aeolus’ offspring is still six feet two inches tall. In the eighties he weighed 175 pounds on the scale (about 80 kilos), a weight that if he now exceeds it, it is not precisely because of fat. No trace of her. His pert butt is still a mass of muscles.
Athletics has become complacent, it is believed to be at the level of tennis, basketball or American football, and it is not.
King Carl was not the fastest on the starting blocks, a characteristic that now seems to transfer to his prosopia. He speaks with a special cadence, aware of the interest he arouses; Nobody takes their eyes off it, everyone is keeping an eye on it, starting with the Press Managers at the Sanitas Foundation. Why has Carl Lewis come to promote inclusive sport? Well, because for him inclusivity is initially a vital issue, with racial roots. It is actually the struggle of his entire life, that of his family and friends; acquire what is yours by inalienable right. Equal rights. His mother Evelyn is his example; woman of color and athlete, had obstacles to compete. And the son assures that “his family’s sacrifice is the key to his successes.”
The most difficult test
Immediately, the translator is clear that the interest of Lewis’s exposition is a reason to blow up a maxim of interpreters: listen, translate and remain silent. The Son of the Wind has never mince words and today it is possible to listen, translate and tell. It must be said that the long jump is the most difficult test in athletics, proven by the few dominators it has had throughout history and its current stagnation.
“I jumped 71 times over 28 feet [8.53 m] before jumping 8.87 meters. How is someone going to get close to 8.90 m now if they have only jumped 8.50 once in their life?” To the scarcity of great marks, the Alabama phenomenon adds that the long periods of time elapsed until the long jump records are broken are another proof of their devilish difficulty. “From the record of Jesse Owens to that of Ralph Boston, 25 years passed. From Beamon to Powell 23 pass and Powell’s record now lasts 31”.
A misleading image
The perfection of his stride and running technique, that visual delight that turned you into a cathodic junkie, was the product of full work. “It felt easy, because when you do the job 100%, the technique comes easily,” he manages to say, when trying to describe the sensation he experienced when running.
The image that came to us of Carl Lewis in the 80s included a certain arrogance, given that he gave the impression of not working hard, especially in the long jump. In his time, Lewis did not have the media in his favor. In his opinion, in the US all the athletes who have marked milestones in the history of their disciplines have always been presented “as assholes” and were not well accepted. “It happened with Jesse Owens, with Bill Russell, with Billie Jean King, with John Carlos and Tommie Smith, and with me,” he says. And he highlights the difficulty of preparing up to four events, facing the rivals of his time “and also the federations.” His relationship with the brands was not ideal either, as they ended up abandoning him. And he repudiates the fact that they have dominated athletes for years.
Decepcionado con el atletismo actual
Lewis tiene a gala haber luchado en pos de un atletismo profesionalizado en el que los atletas pudieran ser dueños de su calendario y percibir unos emolumentos dignos, el precio de machacar su cuerpo y jugarse la salud para posterior disfrute del público.
“But athletics has become complacent, it is believed to be at the level of tennis, basketball or American football, and it is not,” he points out, before stating that “it is stagnant.” On two occasions he compares the decline of athletics with that of the Sears department store chain, bankrupt since 2018. “The catalog was the key to Sears, but they did not know how to adapt to the Internet era. Neither does athletics,” he says. “Athletics no longer fights for its space, unlike Paralympic and inclusive sports. You won’t hear them say that they want a smaller pool and salt water to float better,” he explains to Diario As, looking respectfully at the Paralympic swimmer Teresa Perales. “They do fight for their space and their right to be there, and that’s how it should be,” he concludes.
Athletics has become complacent, it is believed to be at the level of tennis, basketball or American football, and it is not.
Nor does he believe that the phenomenon of Usain Bolt has contributed to strengthening athletics. “It continued to degrade,” he says. He complains that society does not finish transmitting the culture of effort today and that athletics is also an accommodating prey. He, who was a sprinter, was able to combine speed and jumps because he was willing to accept the toughness of such an undertaking. “Nobody does it now,” he remembers. Twice a week he trained the approach race not on the pit lane, but on the track, forgetting about the board. And only twice a month, the jumps. It is the fruit of the conviction that 95% of the long jump is the approach race.
Speaker, investor and coach
Carl Lewis is dedicated to several tasks. He gives leadership talks with his foundation, is an investor in a unicorn-type company (those valued at more than a billion dollars), is a United Nations ambassador with the FAO, has been an actor and has also promoted various commercial brands. At the University of Houston he works with a group of young athletes in whom he instills the importance of running technique, something that, he explains, was the basis of his stride. A perfection of absolute elegance that saved effort. And he details it: “It is a cycle in which the hip extensors have to be combined with the Achilles tendon, the correct way in which the foot is planted to gain momentum, otherwise it slows you down.” However, he emphasizes that the best sprinters in history were cavemen. “If they didn’t run really fast, they served as dinner.”
The question of the long jump final at the World Cup in Tokyo in 1991 is recurring throughout the morning. Lewis has already assumed that the best contest of his life was the one he lost. “Thirty-one years later, you tell someone that the afternoon you jumped 8.68, 8.83, 8.91, 8.87 and 8.84 meters you didn’t win, and they don’t believe you.” In the paradox that the most gifted athlete retired without the world record in the event, without reaching 30 feet, the wind prodigy flatly affirms that it is fine, that he would not exchange such a height for any of his medals. “My granddaughter will one day show those medals to her own grandchildren or even great-grandchildren,” she told Marca later.
On alert in the face of racism that does not cease
The morning progresses and already at the headquarters of the Sanitas Foundation, Carl Lewis resolutely shows La Vanguardia his most political side through videoconference. “I’m a Democrat,” says someone who tried to run for the New Jersey Senate in 2011 (he finally had to withdraw his candidacy, failing to meet the established minimum of four years of residence in the state). “Republicans try to make people believe that public services are a waste that comes for free, when in reality we pay for them.” And he considers himself a spiritual man rather than a religious one. “And my father was a Baptist preacher.”
I have experienced racism daily from the beginning, then and now.
The issue of racism comes to the fore. “I have suffered it daily from the beginning, before and now.” Born in segregation, he assures that he cannot refer to any specific case personally. “Because it is a vital, ongoing experience of my entire life, the day-to-day life of all of us, a system cannot be reduced to a specific example.” As a child he met Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. His parents were involved in the Civil Rights Movement. “In the churches people divided up the tasks, especially during the boycott of segregated buses [bus strike]; “Whoever had a car offered to take more passengers, in exchange they could take care of the children, etc.”
Mint Donald Trump and his talkativeness accelerates. “With Obama we saw that equal rights were possible and that it had to be assumed by the entire society. But then Trump comes along and says to white supremacists: ‘You’re not doing anything wrong, it’s okay to think that way.’” And he believes that right now the social situation is bad. “The year George Floyd was murdered, three others were killed exactly the same, but there were no images. So if the police ever come up to me and order me out of the car, I won’t do it. I will call a television channel, I will put Instagram in live mode, so that what may happen can be seen live.”
“In my country we have not finished assuming that people of color can prosper, have their properties and businesses. It already happened in Tulsa,” he says, alluding to the massacre in 1921 that occurred in the Greenwood neighborhood, in Tulsa (Oklahoma), inhabited by an incipient African-American middle class where there were hundreds of deaths and more than 1,200 houses were razed, also bombed from the air, and businesses looted. “The whites did it!” he shouts, to the journalist’s disbelief.
Null jump due to racism
During a break, the performer remembers and addresses the demigod on his own, weaving together the issue of racism and the failure to achieve the nine meters. “Carl, let’s go back to 1982, to the trials in Indianapolis, that 30-foot null jump that wasn’t actually null. There are people who claim that their non-measurement was due to the racism of the judges.” “Of course, especially one in particular!” he answers immediately. And he adds: “The chair judge made an effort to order the pit judge to rake the jump to prevent its measurement.” It was all very crude, but they went with it.
That afternoon, a 21-year-old Lewis ended up jumping only 8.76 meters. The echoes of that contest also reached Spain, where it was said that Carl Lewis had jumped 9.14 meters in a controversial attempt in which he had not left any mark on the clay with his shoe. Lewis was always clear that the spurious interpretation of the regulations had a racist motive. On YouTube, even the son of one of the judges of the test claims that the main judge was an open racist and that everyone knew it. The jump was not measured, but the footprint in the sand was clearly beyond the chirimbolo with the number 9. And since thirty feet equal exactly 9.14 meters, since in Spain Lewis was always considered worth 9.14 meters. Another cruel paradox, no one could have anticipated then that Lewis might never produce such a jump again.
The morning progresses and Lewis, the best athlete of the 20th century according to the IOC, the best athlete according to World Athletics and the Olympian of the century according to Sports Illustrated, after each interview gives a regular account of the refreshment served on a table. His scandalous body continues to burn, demanding energy sources. This moment of relaxation is taken advantage of by the interpreter, for whom in American sports culture, an aesthetic peak moment is marked by the hairstyles of the basketball player Julius Erving in the 70s, an Afro, and that of Carl Lewis in Los Angeles 1984, a flat-top. brush). “Can you believe that in recent years there are many young people who wear it?” he says with a laugh, and then goes on to say that not long ago he met and spoke with Dr. J at an event in Houston. “Now I couldn’t grow it like that even if I wanted to,” he laments, pointing to the already thinning curls at the front of his scalp.
anatomy lesson
Around 1:00 p.m., for the interview with TVE, Carl Lewis takes off his shirt to put on a corporate t-shirt from the Sanitas Foundation in favor of inclusive sports. They are a few moments in which everyone does not take their eyes off his muscles, pure fiber turned even at 61 years old. In the 17th century, Rembrandt would have chosen him to paint his Anatomy Lesson without the need for a dissected model. Afterwards, a conversation between him and Teresa Perales will be filmed as material for the foundation and a promotional video along the catwalks and garden spaces of the Sanitas headquarters, from where he waves goodbye to the interpreter in the distance. He has already finished his mission and leaves the building.
A smile of 32 very white teeth in a gigantic row crowns a handshake and the Herculean hug that almost crushes the interpreter.
It is 2:30 p.m. and already at the door, the interpreter nevertheless decides to wait next to the hired vehicle that awaits the American legend. He wants to tell her something. He wants to tell him that athletics is no longer the same since he is gone, that sometimes we look for him between the starting blocks, in the sand of the pit and at the exit of the 200 curve. An unreachable trail. But in this unrepeatable wake, you have to be realistic and ask for the impossible. So when the Son of the Wind approaches the car, the interpreter only manages to say: “Carl, when I was a teenager, I used to think that you were a superior being. Now I am fully convinced of it.” A smile of 32 very white teeth in a gigantic row crowns a handshake and the Herculean hug that almost squeezes the interpreter, who now only manages to hear: “I appreciate that!”
