athletics - LA84 Foundation

lost in Los Angeles to Al Joyner’s last jump,
with a new Olympic record of 18.17m. In
the long jump, Carl Lewis’s duel with Mike
Powell, the man who beat that other Mexico
record, Bob Beamon’s, in Tokyo last year,
never really got far off the ground but was still
very close, Lewis and Conley unsure until
they saw the scoreboard who had won the
gold: Lewis, by three centimetres, for his third
successive Olympic long jump title and
eighth gold medal.
Serguei Bubka was the man who fell to
earth in the pole vault, failing to clear the bar
once. He set his sixteenth outdoor world record
at 6.12m in Padua (ITA) just after the
Games but in Barcelona, he could not get it
right on the night, and was unusually ilustered,
in conditions that were certainly windy:
“To me it looked like the watch was running
faster than usual” said a champion suddenly
made man. His failure left the competition
wide open but it was his team-mates rather
than the Americans, who had won every pole
vault event prior to 1972, who made the most
of it: Maxim Tarassov clearing the same
height as lgor Trandenkov, 5.80, at his first attempt
for the gold.
Another major upset occurred when the Carl Lewis, left.
Swiss Werner Gunthor finished outside the Jan Zelezny.
medals in the shot put, in which he was unbeaten
since 1989. Michael Stulce took the
title, after twice reaching 21.70m, the first
time that an American has won the event
since 1968. The Soviet hammer school in
Kiev had three times produced all the medallists
at the Games. The Unified Team followed
suit, Andrey Abduvaliyev of Tajikistan
taking gold, followed by lgor Astapkovich of
Belarus and the Russian lgor Nikulin, all
paying tribute to their maestro, Anatoli Bondarchuk,
gold medallist in 1972 and 1976.
Romas Ubartas, silver medallist in Seoul, won
the single gold for a Lithuanian in Barcelona
in the discus, with 65.12m, the opponent
who beat him in Seoul, Jurgen Schult of Germany,
coming second and Roberto Moya of
Cuba third. Jan Zelezny set an Olympic rec-
ord of 89.66m in the javelin, to win the gold
that eluded him by 16cms in Seoul, the Finn
Seppo Räty moving up from bronze to silver
position, in front of Steve Backley of Britain.
Czechoslovakia’s Robert Zmelik went
into the lead on the first event of the second
day of the decathlon half a second ahead of
the field in the 110m hurdles and he never
looked back, throwing the discus 45m, the
javelin 59.06, jumping 5.10m... Antonio
Penalver of Spain had his best performance in
the discus, in which he came third with
49.68m. and a solid overall performance to
take the silver. Dave Johnson, the world record,
holder, did well to come third after care-
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