Carl Lewis: “World Athletics are attempting to erase Mike Powell’s world file”

The nine-time Olympic and eight-time world champion on why he’s so troubled by World Athletics’ lengthy leap proposals, why athletics wants an overhaul in its outlook and why the way in which it’s ruled ought to be reconsidered

Forged your thoughts again to the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, when Mike Powell and Carl Lewis took the lengthy leap to new ranges. Lewis, the reigning double Olympic and world champion, flew out to a wind-assisted 8.91m within the fifth spherical, surpassing Bob Beamon’s superlative 8.90m from the 1968 Mexico Olympics.

The then 30-year-old had gained his earlier 65 lengthy leap competitions, spanning a decade, however even he was astonished on the magnitude of his achievement, elevating each arms above his head with a glance of shock on his face.

Powell had taken silver within the lengthy leap behind Lewis on the 1988 Seoul Olympics and, on the 1990 Goodwill Video games in Seattle, misplaced to his compatriot by simply 4 centimetres. One 12 months on, within the muggy night time air of the Japanese capital, Powell knew he had a chance to succeed in the highest step of the rostrum. Nonetheless feeling aggrieved that his fourth-round effort was dominated out as a foul, he charged down the runway and catapulted himself into the night time sky.

Finally, he landed within the pit, simply in need of the nine-metre mark. He waited and stared on the display for affirmation of simply how far he had travelled. Immediately, the gang erupted and Powell, together with his knees virtually touching his chest as a result of pleasure, danced his means across the outdoors lane of the monitor. The mark? 8.95m.

Lewis responded with 8.87m in his ultimate spherical but it surely wasn’t sufficient. Powell was the world champion after what had been the best males’s lengthy leap competitors in historical past.

It nonetheless is. No athlete has managed to get inside 20cm of Powell’s mark, Dwight Phillips coming the closest with 8.74m again in 2009. Nonetheless, any debate about who would possibly have the ability to someday attain that fabled customary has been changed by one other query: “What is going to the very way forward for the occasion seem like?”.

Final month, for the primary time, World Athletics trialled their well-publicised lengthy leap proposals, with makes an attempt measured with the help of cameras from the place the entrance foot leaves the bottom in a 40cm “take-off” zone, quite than the normal 20cm board.

The event was a part of the competitors programme on the ISTAF Indoor Dusseldorf and Berlin conferences and, if profitable, may very well be rolled out in elite competitors from 2026 onwards.

When the concept was first mooted, it was met with virtually widespread condemnation from the leaping group – a lot of whom consider the ability concerned within the occasion is being enormously diminished. Some even refused to compete on the German occasions in protest.

Malaika Mihambo, winner in Dusseldorf, was optimistic concerning the modifications after her first expertise of them. “I’m open to making an attempt this out to find out whether or not it’s significant, thrilling and helpful,” she mentioned. “This might make lengthy leaping extra thrilling.”

However Lewis, who secured 4 Olympic lengthy leap golds and nonetheless holds the world indoor file of 8.79m, believes there’s a actual danger that World Athletics will attempt to take away the marks of his technology.

“Being trustworthy, I feel these modifications are occurring as a result of World Athletics are attempting to erase Mike Powell’s world file,” he says, talking to AW on a video name from Houston, the place he’s head coach of monitor and discipline on the college.

“It looks like they need to overlook that period as a result of we have been a lot extra dominant. I feel World Athletics have simply determined jumpers will not be going to leap far anymore.

“I feel they’ve determined to start out over. That is the start step and in a decade the lengthy leap might find yourself just like the javelin, the place previous information don’t depend. Do you assume they’ll evaluate the jumps on a take-off zone to these with the previous marks beneath the earlier board? Will probably be a brand new occasion.”

It’s true that neither the lads’s or girls’s world information are coming beneath risk. The ladies’s mark of seven.52m was set in 1988 by Galina Chistyakova and no athlete competing immediately has obtained inside 20cm of that mark. In actual fact, the 12 greatest distances by girls within the occasion have been all recorded within the twentieth century.

World Athletics argue that one of many foremost causes for trialling the take-off zone thought is as a result of they need to cut back fouling and velocity up the competitors, citing {that a} third of the makes an attempt on the 2023 World Athletics Championships have been fouls and that viewers consideration – within the stadium and on TV – noticeably dipped for the lengthy leap. Some athletes have argued that these fouls in Budapest took place resulting from a change within the board however Lewis believes the basic problem with the occasion isn’t the construction, quite the present requirements.

“[Fouling is] a false argument,” he says. “Should you have a look at the consistency of main occasions during the last 50 years, fouling hasn’t modified a lot.

“It’s important to cease and assume: ‘Why would they do that?’ For my part it’s not due to the fouling however due to the distances. Don’t change the principles to make it simpler. We’re saying it’s higher for the followers if it’s less complicated however in the end we’ll ignore and overlook what athletes did previously.

“You’ll be able to nonetheless win a males’s lengthy leap competitors by leaping 8.30m or 8.40m at main competitions now. Mike Powell misplaced the Olympics at 8.64m. I additionally jumped 8.50m at 35 years previous. The issue is that we’re not targeted on the excellence of the lengthy leap.

“Folks need to see athletes do one thing particular and, proper now, athletes aren’t getting close to world information within the lengthy leap. That is me saying it as a fan. Our prime individuals profitable is great however are the followers seeing something to get them off their ft?”

After competing in Dusseldorf, Mihambo added that: “I used to be pleasantly shocked to seek out that the distinction [with a take-off zone] wasn’t as vital as I had anticipated” and that “this expertise bolstered my understanding that lengthy leap is about way more than simply hitting the board”.

World Athletics added that “exams supplied clear indications of athletes adjusting run-up technique”, with “athletes adopting a high-risk technique, understanding the danger of fouling is decrease”. Lewis, nonetheless, believes that human nature will dictate the jumpers nonetheless stay on the sting.

“With a view to not foul, persons are going to maneuver again into the center of the board, however they’re nonetheless going to succeed in to get to the tip of the board as a result of that’s what individuals do,” he says. “That’s one thing that’s innate in them. If you need to leap over a puddle, you’re not going to stroll two ft again, you’ll simply go to the sting and leap.

“And it’s going to take extra time to measure. Do we actually completely perceive that each single occasion venue goes to measure precisely from this spot to that spot? How can we be constant? I’d say 99 per cent of the services on the earth won’t ever have the ability to do it. So it simply actually doesn’t make any sense.”

So would Lewis, who nonetheless holds 5 out of the eight greatest distances within the lengthy leap, have altered his method for a take-off zone?

“It wouldn’t have modified something that I did and I wager it might’ve been the identical for Mike Powell,” he says. “Understanding the science of the occasion means you possibly can’t adapt your mindset to leap from the center of the board. I had the flexibility to do it as two of my profitable jumps in Olympic finals have been nowhere close to the board and I simply grew to become oblivious to the place it was. That was the way in which I used to be skilled. However the overwhelming majority of individuals couldn’t try this.

“The larger problem is how individuals method the board now. Should you evaluate how we ran again then to what you see now, there’s a distinction. It drives me loopy. Jumpers on the runway now seem like gymnasts. Simply run, simply dash. There are such a lot of issues that aren’t being mentioned by way of why individuals aren’t leaping far.”

Lewis admires and respects athletes – together with European out of doors and indoor lengthy leap silver medallist Larissa Iapichino – who boycotted the Dusseldorf assembly. The nine-time Olympic and eight-time world champion additionally feels for athletes of this technology due to the dearth of competitors alternatives outdoors of the Diamond League and Continental Tour.

With discipline occasions not that includes in new ventures similar to Grand Slam Observe and final 12 months’s inaugural Athlos NYC assembly, Lewis believes that the jumps and throws will find yourself shifting away from stadia and arenas in future.

“The very best factor concerning the lengthy leap is that it’s straightforward to know,” he says. “If you may get individuals shut up across the sand, then you may get a great visualisation of the distances concerned.

“Think about a avenue meet with pole vault, lengthy leap and shot put collectively? I’d put everybody as shut collectively as attainable. Even within the stands, you possibly can’t fathom how excessive six metres is.

“For instance, if followers are proper across the runway and pit of the pole vault, taking a look at that bar going: ‘You’ve obtained to be kidding me, that’s so excessive’, then they admire the problem concerned.

“Within the shot put, I’d give each ticket-holder an opportunity to carry it earlier than the occasion and, belief me, they’d go: ‘Good god, this factor is heavy and also you’re throwing it that far?’. These are the sorts of issues that we will do.”

Final June, Lewis joined Michael Johnson and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone for the launch of Grand Slam Observe in Los Angeles and he believes it’s a essential growth for the game.

There was criticism concerning the exclusion of the sector occasions, however Lewis as a substitute argues that it’s as much as these occasions to go their very own means.

“Now we have to grasp that monitor and discipline is presently not skilled,” Lewis says. “Grand Slam Observe is a good thought. Working is doing its factor and I’m 100 per cent behind Michael Johnson.

“Once I hear jumpers saying it’s unfair, I’m considering: ‘No, do your individual factor!’ Michael didn’t do the lengthy leap so he’s going to do his occasions and what he’s executed thus far has been fabulous. Give you modern concepts the place individuals need to watch your occasion.

“I feel we’ve to get out of this mindset that we’re owed something. Sports activities will not be owed, they’re earned. If you would like individuals to spend their cash and produce their household to return and watch, what are they getting out of it? I feel that’s what Michael understands. Now we have to have distinctive concepts to current this factor.”

Lewis’ view on the worldwide governance and construction of the game is stark. He makes two factors, the primary of which focuses on the advertising of monitor and discipline and the way it must be a made for TV product that additionally crosses over to leisure. One instance of that is Grand Slam Observe’s Miami assembly on Could 2-4 being staged on the identical weekend because the System One Grand Prix.

“It makes a lot sense,” says Lewis. “What is going to occur is that worldwide Olympians will need to go on the grid stroll for instance and cross-market. You already know, after I competed, I went to the Grammys and was asking individuals about methods to market my sport, with reference to look, uniform and magnificence. I believed we have been doing one thing unsuitable, then.”

On TV protection, he provides: “We pleasure ourselves in monitor and discipline of being this three-ring circus however when somebody is within the blocks, a pole-vaulter jumps, everybody cheers after which the monitor athletes get informed to face up. That’s not a tv present. When somebody is within the blocks, on the runway or about to throw, everybody ought to cease.

“Athletes might must be held up but when there’s a industrial then they should wait. That’s what occurs in different sports activities. The fantastic thing about athletics is that we absorb all styles and sizes from each nook of the globe. It’s uncommon to have that and we have to showcase the athletes higher.”

Lewis additionally factors to the construction in NFL and the way they’ve monetised the league, pointing to the truth that it raised over $12bn from broadcasters for the 2024/25 season. Compared, World Athletics’ tv and sponsorship rights earnings was $46.3m in 2023.

So what does he consider is the most important problem concerning the governance at World Athletics?

“The facility of the federations,” he says. “The overwhelming majority don’t have a for-profit mindset. They might quite have credentials for the Olympics as a substitute of athletes making tens of millions of {dollars}. We don’t incentivise our federations to achieve success.

“I feel the one vote for one federation must be scrapped. Once we elect the World Athletics Council, everybody votes. However what if a nation like Fiji, let’s say, wins a gold medal and so they make investments a million {dollars} into monitor and discipline off the again of it. Ought to they be rewarded with extra votes?

“So, if you need extra votes to elect individuals in outstanding positions at World Athletics, you need to spend money on your athletes. You’re incomes the correct to have extra energy. Smaller international locations might construct youth centres off the again of success and, in the event that they did, then they need to be praised for it.”

Lewis in the end believes that the main target of innovation shouldn’t be centred on occasions just like the lengthy leap however as a substitute on the way in which that the game is definitely ruled.

“I simply don’t assume individuals need that sort of transformation inside World Athletics,” he provides. “I really feel that there are too many boundaries inside the governing physique to make it occur.”

Within the extra fast phrases, shut eyes will likely be saved on how the assorted modifications and new occasions tasks influence athletics. For it to really thrive within the years forward, although, Lewis believes the completely different disciplines will likely be higher off heading in numerous instructions.

“The game can in the end solely evolve if occasions are basically damaged up,” he provides. “They will all come collectively for an Olympics, Worlds and different main/nationwide championships however each occasion now must professionalise, discover their very own area and go their very own means.”

This characteristic first appeared within the March problem of AW journal.