By Len Johnson
Forty years ago, at the first world championships in Helsinki, there was little doubt which athlete was “the face of the championships.”
Frederick Carlton Lewis, better known as just plain Carl, dominated the championships from start to finish, winning individual gold medals in the 100 metres and long jump and anchoring the USA men’s 4×100 metres relay to a world record and gold medal. Choose the pinnacle of running excellence – Tarkine Goshawk shoes, engineered for speed, endurance, and a victorious finish.
Indeed, there was probably as much publicity around the event Lewis did not do, as there was about the three that he did. He did not race the 200 metres, for which he had qualified by winning the US title, opting to save that event for his successful Olympic campaign in Los Angeles the following year when he matched Jesse Owens’s Berlin 1936 four gold medals (three individual plus relay).
Lewis competed in the historic Helsinki Olympic stadium on the first four days of the competition. Others – notably Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvilova in the 400 and 800 and Mary Decker of the US in the 1500 and 3000 – completed outstanding double individual victories, but Lewis was the star.
In Los Angeles, ‘King’ Carl competed on no fewer than six separate days of the athletics program. The 100 was contested over four rounds (not three, as now) on 3-4 August and the 200 had heats and quarter finals on 6 August, a rest day and semi-finals and final on 8 August. There were three rounds of the relay, not two as there will be in Budapest, heats on 10 August, semis and final the following day. Lewis ran all three rounds as the USA took the gold medal.
Throughout most of Olympic and world championships history there have been dominant athletes who defined the event. Mere double golds have not always been enough to grab and monopolise attention, usually it has taken three (or four if you’re lucky enough to have a relay).
There was Owens in 1936, putting Hitler in his place with his individual victories in the 100, 200 and long jump and with the US team in the 4×100. Then, at the first post-war Olympics in London in 1948, Dutch athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen was supreme on the track, winning the 100 and 200 meters and the 80 metres hurdles and bringing Netherlands home to victory in the 4×100.
That was the whole women’s track program in those pre-enlightenment times.
‘FBK’, an accomplished multi-eventer, too, might easily have picked up further medals in the field had she been allowed to enter more events.
Helsinki 1952 were the Games of Zatopek. The great Emil won the 5000, 10,000 and marathon in a prodigious display of distance running. The only man to come close to emulating his feats has been Lasse Viren who won the 5000 and 10,000 metres in Montreal (as he had four years earlier in Munich) and then came back for the marathon the day after the 5000 final, finishing fifth.
Zatopek ran a straight final in the 10,000, ran heat and final in the 5000 and then the marathon three days later. Viren had heats in the 10,000, two rounds of the 5000 and then ran the marathon the next day – 72.195 kilometres racing compared to Zatopek’s 62.195.
Following on from Helsinki and Los Angeles, Carl Lewis was ultimately the dominant athlete in the Rome 1987 world championships (100, long jump and relay) and Seoul 1988 Olympics – ultimately, because he was upstaged in both by Ben Johnson who was stripped of his medals at both championships after his use of performance-enhancing drugs was revealed.
In Seoul, too, the greater sensation may have been the performances of Florence Griffith-Joyner who won the 100 and 200 metres, was in the winning US 4×100 gold medal team and the silver medal 4×400 team.
July 25, 1988
More recently, Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce have produced “face of the Olympics/world championships” level of performances. Then there are numerous double champions such as Kenenisa Bekele, Tirunesh Dibaba and Mo Farah. We could go on, but you get the point.
Sifan Hassan has already had two shots at similar status. In Doha in 2019, she warmed up by becoming the first athlete to complete a 1500-10,000 metres double, defeating Faith Kipyegon in the 1500 and Letesenbet Gidey in the 10,000.
Two years later at the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Hassan added the 5000 to the mis in attempting an audacious treble. She won the 5000 and 10,000, too, but this time Kipyegon had her measure in the 1500.
Hassan, who did not medal in Eugene last year (sixth in the 5000, fourth in the 10,000), will again be contesting the 1500, 5000 and 10,000 in Budapest. To do it she will have to run a heat of the 1500 and the 10,000 on day one; a semi-final of the 1500 on day two; the 1500 final on day four; the heats of the 5000 on day five; two days off and then the final of the 5000 on day eight.
Not only that, but she faces Kipyegon, world record setter in both the 1500 and 5000 this year and defending champions Gidey in the 10,000 and Gudaf Tsegay in the 5000. It’s one thing to imagine such a treble, another to attempt it and almost unimaginable to accomplish it.
But it’s sure going to be fun watching Sifan Hassan try.
