Sprinter's track record also reads 'charitable bloke'

By Bill McAuley | 30 March 2025, 12:00pm | comments |

In 1993, the great U.S. athlete Carl Lewis came to Melbourne to visit a local teenage athlete suffering from a debilitating disease.

The young man was a big fan of Lewis, who was arguably the most outstanding track-and-field athlete on the planet.

On Lewis' last day in Melbourne, my editor invited me and several journalists to accompany him to the airport.

Lewis was always very public about his disapproval of performance-enhancing drugs in athletics, which just happened to be the subject of conversation as we travelled along Tullamarine Freeway. Much to our surprise, he named a high-profile athlete as a cheat — Lewis said he thought Florence Griffith Joyner was using performance-enhancing drugs.

The newspaperman’s antennae on each of us instantly stood up. Someone asked, "Can we quote you on that, Carl?".

Lewis replied, "Yes, you can", explaining:

‘Because her time for the 100m dramatically improved by almost half a second in a short space of time and that could only happen through the use of performance-enhancing drugs.’

At one stage I asked him what went through his mind when he was on the starting blocks for a 100-metre race in an Olympic final.

Said Lewis:

Well, Bill, I have a template of what I have to do in my mind, like a computer replica of me running the race, I try to follow that model. At the sound of the starter’s pistol, I move my left leg forward and raise my right hand up and push forward and so on.

If I follow the template in my mind perfectly, I’ll run a world-record time. If I can’t keep up with the model in my mind, I’ll be slower.

It was an absolute privilege to get the lowdown from this champion, who had won a staggering nine Olympic gold medals and was voted Sportsman of the Century by the International Olympic Committee.

Someone called the paper the next day to say Lewis had left some "stuff" behind in his hotel room.

We sent a copy person across to pick up said "stuff" and, to our amazement, he returned clutching a handful of World Athletics Championships and Olympic medals — trophies Lewis had brought with him to show the ill young man and forgotten to pack before flying back to the U.S. We duly packaged up the medals and returned them.

**This photograph is part of an IA series that looks at Australia through the lens of award-winning photojournalist Bill McAuley.**

Bill McAuley's 40-plus-year news career began in 1969 as a cadet photographer at 'The Age' in Melbourne.

He has several published collections, including 'Portraits of the Soul: A lifetime of images with Bill McAuley'. To see more from Bill, click here.