Digital Ink Los Angeles

Games of the XXIII Olympiad
July 28 — August 12, 1984

The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Ca., included rowing at Lake Casitas, archery at UCLA, and volleyball at Long Beach State.

According to the official site, www.olympic.org:

“With the Olympics being held in the United States only four years after the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games, it was not surprising that the Soviet Union organised a revenge boycott in 1984. This time only 14 nations stayed away – but those nations accounted for 58% of the gold medals at the 1976 Olympics.”

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is now known as the home of the USC Trojans football team. In 1984, it was the stage for grand achievements in Track & Field by Britain’s Davey Thompson in the decathlon and USA’s Joan Benoit in the women’s marathon.

Maybe it was the flash of Hollywood lights that inspired “King” Carl Lewis of Houston, Tex., USA, to cast his bronze and stamp his name in the Olympic history books.

As a member of the local Santa Monica Track Club, he matched the achievement of fellow countryman Jesse Owens, by winning four gold medals in the same events as Owens (Berlin 1936): 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay, and the long jump. Carl Lewis dominated the sport as much as Michael Phelps dominates most swimming events.

This photo shows Carl Lewis running the approach track at the Memorial Coliseum on his way to a then world-record, 30-foot long-jump attempt. Twelve years later, Carl Lewis would return to the gold-medal stand as a long shot Gold-Medal winner at the Atlanta 1996 – Games of the XXVI Olympiad.