Word: margin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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First, two Saturdays ago, he won the 100-meter dash. As the aficionados put it, Lewis was fast and Sam Graddy only quick. The time was 9.99, the margin comfortable. Then the long jump, and it could have been mailed in. "My strategy will be the same as always," he announced beforehand, "to pop a very big jump early and make everyone chase after me. If I feel 'on' after my first jump, I might take a second." For a personal Olympic motto he chose: "A gold medal is first. The world record is last." If his priorities...
...course, all the speculation proved pointless. The American women beat their opponents by an average margin of 33; the men by 32. Even the scores did not fully convey the sense of hopelessness with which the other teams went onto the court. Coach Antonio Diaz-Miguel of Spain, whose men's team lost by 101-68 in a preliminary game and by 96-65 for the gold medal, predicted from the outset that the U.S. men would not lose a game. Said he: "American basketball is 50 years ahead of other countries, and I think no one will ever...
...journey's first 100 meters started to corroborate the cause for anticipation. He gusted past Sam Graddy and Ben Johnson to win, tossed his arms again, plucked an oversize American flag out of the crowd and bounced around the stadium, all eyes where he wanted them. The margin of victory, one-fifth of a second, tied the largest in Olympic 100 history. He cracked 10, but missed the 9.93 world record by .06 sec. Then his gaze shifted to the long jump, the 200 and the relay, to Jesse Owens certainly, maybe even Bob Beamon. The miraculous jump...
...side, Peter Vidmar missed the same distinction by an achingly narrow margin, falling short of the gold in the all-around by a mere .025 point. "Twenty-five one-thousandths of a point," says Vidmar. "Maybe I wish the difference would have been two-tenths or three-tenths. Now I could say, 'If I didn't take a step here, if I didn't take a step there.' " In fact, it was precisely two steps that cost him the gold. In the floor exercise, he was twice forced to take a small step...
...found its way through--on forward Louis Paul Mfede's sizzling leftie boot into the corner of the goal mouth from 20 yards--but it was not enough, as the Canadians were to score again to provide the final two-goal margin...