Word: jumped
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...things ephemeral have limited appeal, but the heart of the Olympics is that things shine for a moment and no more. Did Dwight Stones really clear that bar at 7 ft. 8 in.? One saw it happen a second ago. One saw it again on instant replay. Yet the jump no longer exists, nor can it return. Billy Mills, who won the 10,000-meter run in Tokyo, said, "For one fleeting moment an athlete will know he or she is the best in the world. Then the moment is gone." Bill Russell, pro basketball's philosopher, likes the short...
...Olympic Games in Los Angeles, 48 years after Jesse Owens won gold medals in the long jump, the 100, the 200 and the relay, Lewis is favored in the same four events. Amid the bedlam of track's athletic circus, only he makes everything else come to a stop. His body is hard, like mahogany, but carved in unusually clear detail, including ropelike muscular definition. He is full-faced, rather babyfaced, but otherwise trim: 6 ft. 2 in., 173 Ibs. As a 100-meter sprinter, Lewis has registered the third-fastest time ever...
...Lewis heard of Beamon's jump then, it was not until Carl had turned ten that he took exact measure of the distance in his front yard, and thought, "This doesn't make sense. How could a human being do this?" He meant to find out. By 16, Lewis had old headlines pasted up on his bedroom wall, amended with his own name: CARL LEWIS, KING OF THE 27-FT. JUMPERS. From the age of two, he had grown up in Willingboro, where his parents had moved to avoid desegregation troubles in Birmingham and to pursue graduate studies and teaching...
...disparate as their personalities and interests would always be, each furnished the fundamental relationship in the other's childhood and young adulthood from the days when the long-jump pit of Evelyn's team served as their sandbox. There might have been no Carl without Carol. In high school she was a force, a varsity diver and gymnast who played recreation-league softball, ran track, waved pom-poms and wished she could do more. Carl attempted hail-fellow sports like baseball, but as a coach of that period remembers, "he was always picking daisies in centerfield." For Lewis, track became...
...laughs, but then he adds seriously, "When you have money, you have a lot of freedom. It's no big deal, but I understand its value." Regarding the relationship between money and freedom, as between celebrity and privacy, Lewis' understanding is sure to increase. He is about to jump feet first into all of them...