Special Guest Carl Lewis with Malaysian Athletes in Kuala Lumpur (Part 1)

The legend Carl Lewis

 A special thanks to Nike Malaysia for arranging the Olympic legend Carl Lewis to Malaysia and invited a handful sprint athletes to participate in there program. It was held yesterday at Nike outlet in Pavilllion mall in Kuala Lumpur. Carl Lewis shared quite a lot his experiences, training strategy and tips and dealt with our questions.

During his career, he has won 9 gold medal at the Olympics and 8 gold medals at the IAAF World Championship.  He equalled Jesse Owens' performances during the 1984 Olympics with a 4 gold medals. He also had an undefeated streaks for almost 11 years in the long jump and had won it in a 4 consecutive Olympics.

He currently holds the World indoor record in the long jump in 8.79m where he registered in 1984. In 100 metres sprint, he has 3 consecutive gold medal in the World championships, and 2 at the Olympics. He selected for an International Olympic Committee (IOC) 'Sportsman of the Century' in 1999. He also named as 'the best Olympian of 20th century. Without a doubt, he is the greatest track and field athlete of all-time. Okay, enough about introduction.

The most memorable moment in Lewis career were in the 1984 where he won the 100metres dash in his first Olympics' appearance and also when he won his last gold medal in the Olympics which was in Atlanta 1996 in long jump. He also mentioned that the best performance he has done was from the World record breaking in the 100 metres in 9.86s during the IAAF World Championship in Tokyo in 1991.

Carl Lewis' inspiration came from the 4F: Faith, Family, Friend and Forget yourself!!. The most important thing an athlete must have is Faith. A deep faith to God and on himself has brought a very successful career to him. Family has been very close to him, and keep him to be the best. Lewis has mentioned about how close was himself to the rest of  members of the Santa Monica Track Club under the renowned athletics coach, Tom Tellez.

Carl Lewis with Malaysian sprint athletes

"Me, Leroy Burrell, Joe Deloach and Michael Marsh were very close and we're very determined, tried hard and fight to each other in our training to be a great athlete". It is where the third F= Friends became the source of inspiration of him. Relationship between Lewis and friends remained close until these days. "We're still good and  I've chatted with Leroy Burrell (who has broken  Lewis' WR twice in 1991 and 1994 with 9.90s and 9.85s respectively) last week in Texas". And the last 'F' would be about to became arrogant (Forget yourself!!... your opponents) to his rivals during only competition.

The 49-year-old still fit and slim also mentioned he was more on a long jumper rather than a 100 metres sprinter. He didn't lift the weights as much as people think but he has done a lot of plyometric exercises. "I loves the long jump more the the 100 metres, and my daily training types were more on a long jump training".

However, the 100 metres dash was always his priority because of the title of  “the fastest man in the world”, only to be awarded from the century dash winning. However, Lewis told us that a long jumper has  potential to excel in the 100 metres sprint but it's a bit difficult for a sprinter to be a long jumper.

He was very humble, funny, and cool!!

To be continued.