Track 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."