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Before the 200-meter race something special seemed afoot, but Lewis could rouse only victory. One of his legs was complaining quietly and he decided, "I just want to get the race over with." He looked tired to Tom Tellez, his Houston coach. "He wasn't smooth. There's been a lot of pressure on him. Only Jesse Owens would know how Carl Lewis feels after the last few years of expectations." The 19.80 Carl dashed off was no embarrassment though. Only Pietro Mennea of Italy (19.72) and Lewis himself (19.75) have run the 200 in a faster time. Mennea was in the race, incidentally, as he has been in four straight Olympic 200 finals since 1972. Imagine, a sprinter achieving such a thing, age 32. "Carl Lewis will never do it," the Italian said after finishing seventh, not meaning any unkindness. "He will run the fastest 200 some day, but he will never be back for four Olympics."
Three Americans swept the 200; up the track they stopped and lighted on one knee with Lewis in the middle banding Kirk Baptiste and Thomas Jefferson in his long arms. Afterward again the prepared statement: "It was great to jog around holding the flag with two other guys and not just by myself." Now only the relay separated him from Owens, and Lewis appeared ready to go all out. "I have three guys that are unparalleled in front of me." Though early-round understudies are permissible in the relay, he staffed every round. "If anyone drops the baton," Tellez said, "he wants to be the one."
The baton passed smartly from Sam Graddy to Ron Brown to Calvin Smith, whose only role in the Olympics was this 100-meter leg. Smith's famous early burst won the lead, and Lewis' 8.94 split topped off the first world record of the Olympic track meet: 37.83. Lewis' sister Carol, who had failed to make the finals in the women's long jump, greeted him with a bouquet and a heart-shaped balloon—hearts and flowers. "This has been the time of my life," he said. "I'm tired emotionally and physically. The world record lifts me up." He planned to celebrate by jumping fully clothed into a swimming pool.
Decker's Olympic epitaph is the saddest one, that she never had the chance to succeed or fail. Without challenge, almost invisibly, formidable Rumanian Maricica Puica finished the ill-starred race with her yellow hair flying. It was the Games' inaugural 3,000-meter run for women, another piece to the creeping acknowledgment of their athletic competence. Puica looked eminently competent, and not being able to see her hooked up with Decker in the stretch was a sore loss. In 1972 Decker was just starting out as little Mary, 14, not yet contrary, who ran so extremely hard, her bones occasionally came out of their sockets. A major reconstruction job on her shins kept her from Montreal in 1976. A war in Afghanistan stopped her in 1980. "Obviously, myself and the Olympics don't have a very good relationship," she said after the crash last Friday night.