At the end of 15, I was still really, really small.
And so that summer was when I started to grow.
As I got taller, I ran faster and jumped farther.
And it was just a direct correlation.
And when I talk about it now, people would never realise
that I was a small, short kid for my age.
I was a very late bloomer as an athlete.
So no-one would've imagined that I would gone on to become
an Olympic champion, especially at that age.
(LATE BLOOMER LOS ANGELES '84)
(LOS ANGELES, 4TH AUGUST 1984, 7:10 PM)
(DAVID WALLECHINSKY)
(UNITED STATES OLYMPIC HISTORIAN)
Hello?
Carl Lewis was about 12 years old,
he was competing as a long jumper,
he was very small.
One day, at a meet in Philadelphia...
..Jesse Owens was there.
Carl Lewis' father went up to Jesse Owens and said,
"Mr Owens, I want to introduce you to my son Carl.
"He's a long jumper."
Jesse Owens looked down at this little boy and said,
"Well, you're competing against these kids
"who are so much bigger than you are.
"You must be a spunky little guy."
About three years later,
Carl Lewis suddenly started to grow.
So from being this little spunky little guy at the age of 12,
he became a big guy at 15.
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(CARL LEWIS, UNITED STATES, 100 METRES, 200 METRES)
(4 X 100 METRES RELAY, LONG JUMP)
The 100 metre final was... It was electric, obviously,
because it's a huge event.
And the stadium is 93,000, it was completely full.
And that's what was great about Los Angeles,
the morning and night sessions were completely full, all of them.
There was this anticipation,
because everyone knows that the 100 metres
would've been the most difficult of the four events.
I was focused on running my best.
I knew that if I ran my best race, that I could win.
I didn't worry about the other people,
I kept the energy down to,
"Run your best race, you win. Run your best race, you win."
But I knew Sam Graddy was definitely a challenger.
He has a great start, he's a good athlete.
Ron Brown, who was also the other American,
I knew he'd be a challenge.
Alan Wells was coming back, but I wasn't really worried about him,
he didn't make the final.
So, really those two, the two Americans,
were the ones that I thought had a shot.
Because at the time, we were just so far ahead of everyone else.
And I realised, "Look, don't worry about them,
"if you run your own race, you win."
So it's really going back to the basic elements,
really specifically, like,
"Push out of the blocks, run, put your feet down, stay tall."
These are the things that go through my head
when I run and practice,
so that I can clear my mind and just run it like that.
In that race, he was at his...
Even though he kept winning after that,
he was at his peak.
At one point he was clocked at,
you know, by American standards, at 28mph.
And so...
You know, it was great.
I mean, there's this great quote from Sam Graddy,
who took the silver medal, and he said
at the 80-metre mark he was in first place,
and he thought he was going to win the gold medal,
and then out of the corner of his eye
he saw Carl Lewis just appear
and then zip past him, and in front of him.
Carl Lewis was a fantastic athlete,
no question about it.
His winning margin was the widest in Olympic history
until Usain Bolt,
so that was the beginning of Carl Lewis
and his four gold medals.
The 100-metre medal meant the most,
obviously, because that's the first one.
When you dream of the Olympics, you never know
what it's going to be like until you get there.
And then when you go there and you win,
then, now you're an Olympic champion for life.
So, absolutely, the first one was the most special, for sure.
I was the best in the world at that time.
(DWIGHT STONES, US TV COMMENTATOR)
(AND FORMER OLYMPIC ATHLETE)
This is Dwight.
In those days, if you broke ten seconds for the 100 metres,
it was sort of a big deal.
At the time, the world record, I believe, was not faster than 9.93,
I believe was the world record at the time.
So if you were under ten seconds, that was a very fast time.
In Los Angeles, all of the buzz
was of Carl Lewis winning four gold medals
and the 100 metres was just one,
actually the first of the gold medals that he needed to win.
He had some control over three of those medals.
He didn't have complete control over the fourth one,
because he was a member of the relay team,
so if the relay team had made a mistake,
with two false starts,
or if they passed out of the zone or dropped the baton,
that fourth gold medal was in doubt.
But the other three events, he had some control over.
But it was really not close. I mean,
none of the events were close for Carl Lewis
in those '84 Olympic Games.
Those Games were all about Carl Lewis.
I wanted to be excellent.
When I went to the University of Houston when I was 18,
I had no intention of being a sprinter.
I was strictly a long jumper, and that was it.
The sprinting came on later,
as I started to have some success.
I put them on a scale of one to ten,
and the long jump is a ten, the 100 metres is a four.
I mean, it's that different,
it is so much more difficult.
And that's why you don't see jumpers and sprinters,
because it's very difficult to do the long jump.
And you'll never see a sprinter that becomes a long jumper,
it just will never happen.
A long jumper can become a sprinter, though,
because it's the easier event.
It was a big joy to win the Olympic Games,
but the bigger emotion was relief,
because for a year and a half it was just anticipation,
anticipation, and then the pressure coming from outside,
the way the media was saying,
"Well, you've got to do all four, or you're a failure."
You know, so, therefore it was a lot of relief to say,
"Wow, I got that off my shoulder. Now let's go to the next event."
And that's really what it was.
When I retired from competition, I was ready to go.
I haven't missed it, per se, one minute.
And that's not a negative thing.
I look at it the opposite, it's positive.
I've milked every ounce of energy
out of my Olympic experience.
And when I was on the podium in 1996 in Atlanta,
at 35 years old,
it all came out of me.
I realised then, it's time to go,
because I did everything I possibly could've done times 100.
(CARL LEWIS WON 4 GOLD MEDALS IN LOS ANGELES 1984)
(EMULATING WHAT JESSE OWENS ACHIEVED IN BERLIN 1936)
(HE BURIED THE 100M GOLD MEDAL
(WITH HIS FIRST COACH: HIS FATHER)
(AFTER RETIRING, HE BECAME AN ACTOR AND SINGER)
(AND NOW COACHES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON)
(ON THE LINE)
Great, thank you. OK.