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The inconsistency in long jump is frustrating: Carl Lewis
The quality and depth of Indian boxing shone through on a sensational night
Carl Lewis, the American athlete who gulped nine Olympic gold medals through a spread of long jump, sprints and relay, started out with four rather uncomplicated goals in mind. Although intertwined, two of them had little to do with testing the boundaries of the track and field world.
"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 said.
"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 kind of champion mentality with which Lewis won gold at the Games of 1984 LA (100m, 200m, long jump, 4x100m relay), 1988 Seoul (100m, long jump), 1992 Barcelona (long jump, 4x100m relay) and 1996 Atlanta (long jump). The kind which, the 61-year-old reckoned, has been in sparse supply in the modern-day athlete, leading to the men’s long jump witnessing a plateau in recent times.
The best leap from the last 10 years, Jamaican Tajay Gayle's 8.69m in 2019, sits 10th in the all-time list headed by Mike Powell's 8.95m (Lewis's 8.87m from the iconic 1991 worlds final is third). Greek Miltiadis Tentoglou became the Tokyo Olympics long jump champion with 8.41m. Wang Jianan's 8.36m effort made the Chinese last year’s world champion. This season's best jump so far rests at 8.42m with India's Jeswin Aldrin, who got there earlier this month breaking M Sreeshankar's national record at the Throws and Jumps Competition in Ballari.
The two Indians are taking some giant strides in the long jump, although the inconsistency plague saw them oscillate between the good (Jeswin’s 8.37m, Sreeshankar's CWG silver) and the gloom (below-par worlds) last season. Lewis, though, believes it's not just an Indian thing but an overall drop in the standards of one of the most technical track and field events.
"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 said on the sidelines of the Indian Sports Honours awards 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 also jumped a wind-assisted 8.91m in that 1991 Tokyo duel with Powell.
Currently into coaching as the head of University of Houston’s athletics programme, Lewis puts it down to the fast-changing "era of social media”. We're also in the post-Usain Bolt era, where sprinting is no longer one showman’s business. A largely unheralded Italian (Marcell Jacobs) blazed to a 100m triumph clocking 9.80s at the Tokyo Olympics, where a Chinese (Su Bingtian) too finished sixth at 9.98s. The Americans headlined by Fred Kerley and Noah Lyles engineered the 100m-200m sweep at the worlds last year.
"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 said. “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.”
