Carrying on his epic fight a year earlier at the world championships was always going to be a difficult task, and so it resulted in the long-awaited rematch that turned out to be a disappointment to everyone except Carl Lewis.
The reason for this was an injury to Mike Powell, who insisted on competing in the tournament anyway, but meant he was operating maybe 70%. The pain etched on his face every time he threw himself into the well was truly heartbreaking.
Lewis returned to producing a series of excellent jumps and went gold. If Powell hadn’t been injured, this competition would have been great, but Powell’s injury ruined the party atmosphere.
The 8.95m record for the long jump still stands today. Many men have approached the magical 30-foot barrier, but no one has passed it yet. Names like Carl Lewis, Mike Powell and Ivan Pedroso were all capable of producing big jumps, but so far they haven’t been allowed to do it all. I guess the record will be broken at some point, but I don’t know when.
Carl Lewis can rightly claim to be the greatest long jumper of all time, for his consistency, jump length, and achievements in the grand finals. But I think he would also have wanted to be the man who held the world record. It was very close throughout the years, even producing 8.91 million, although the wind helped on that epic night in 1991, but the big one eluded it.