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Time - Man of the Year
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1993-04-08
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OLYMPICS, Page 631992 SUMMER GAMESTrack Stars
GOLDEN OLDIE RETURNS ONCE MORE
Carl Lewis, U.S.
Only yesterday, it seems, he was entrenched as the world's
premier sprinter and jumper. After four Olympic gold medals in
1984 and two in '88, F. Carleton Lewis (he strongly prefers
Carl) last August recorded an astonishing 100-m world record.
But almost simultaneously, the end of the Lewis era began to be
visible.
At the same August meet, he had watched Mike Powell sail
past him to take the record and become the world's best long
jumper. In June, Lewis ate the dust of Mark Witherspoon and
Dennis Mitchell at the 100-m U.S. Olympic trials. Shockingly he
failed to qualify for either the 100- or 200-m sprints. In
Barcelona for his third Olympic appearance, the world's fastest
man has an outside shot at being chosen for the 4 X 100 m-U.S.
relay team. But he's only guaranteed a chance to compete in the
long jump, and is not assured a medal there. Still he has stuck
to his usual training regimen, and the preternatural Lewis
aplomb, which so many have mistaken for ice water, may serve him
one final time. "Experience does mean a lot," he says.
HOW HIGH CAN HE FLY?
Sergei Bubka, Unified Team
For the past eight years, Sergei Bubka's grip on the pole
vault has been so unrelenting that every competition he enters
becomes not a question of who will win but how high Bubka will
soar.
The son of a Russian army officer who grew up in the
Ukraine, the unknown athlete at 19 literally vaulted onto the
scene with a winning 18-ft. 8 1/4-in. jump at the 1983 Helsinki
world championships. He has dominated the sport since -- winning
the 1988 Olympic gold, taking 23 of the 25 meets he entered last
year, and arcing 20 ft. or better four times. With his speed
(10.2 sec. in the 100 m) and dazzling strength (his wedge-shaped
upper body resembles a gymnast's), the 176-lb. Bubka is able to
use a pole designed for someone weighing 44 lbs. more, allowing
him extra spring. Sponsors reportedly give him as much as
$25,000 to make an appearance, while Nike pays every time he
sets a new world record. And at 28, the star grazer is probably
still rising toward the peak of his parabola.
LEAGUE OF HER OWN
Jackie Joyner-Kersee, U.S.
As the heptathlon and long-jump champion of the 1988
Games, she became the greatest -- and perhaps best known --
woman athlete in the world. Her world-record point total in the
seven-event heptathlon (7,291) is regarded as virtually
unmatchable. But one warm night in Tokyo last August, the
superhuman Jackie Joyner-Kersee seemed momentarily mortal. She
pulled a hamstring muscle in the 200-m race and left the world
championships on a stretcher. "I thought my career was over,"
she says. It was just a temporary abdication though.
After therapy, Joyner-Kersee, 30, is back in form, and
favored to become the first to win the Olympic heptathlon twice.
But these days Joyner-Kersee seems less concerned about her
place in athletic history than with using her good fortune to
help out in her hometown. Last November she chartered a plane
to take 114 kids from East St. Louis, Illinois, to see the
Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City. "People think it's
special to be an all-around athlete," she says. "But it's more
important to be an all-around person."