Powell soared high on hard work, not dope

Most of us have attempted to flap our hands and fly like a bird at least once in our lives. The disastrous results didn’t stop us trying and nor did we regret it. Haven’t we all wanted to know what it felt like to soar high in the skies, in control, without fear and on our own?

Now to know how that feels we could either learn bird-speak or just seek out Mike Powell. For he knows the sensation just as well.

Watching the lanky figure of Powell walk around seems surreal. It’s even more unbelievable to watch him show just how long 8.95 metres, the distance he jumped, no… flew, to establish his long jump world record, really is.

Powell, who was in Mumbai, got off the dais and placed a bottle at one end of the room, wondering aloud, “Is this room going to be big enough?”

The room burst out laughing, mostly in disbelief. Then Powell started taking carefully measured steps, 29-and-a-half of them – the audience counting along with him, clapping and when the American finally stopped, everyone gasped in unison.

As if on cue, Powell went, “Man, I was pretty good.”

More laughs followed but by now everyone was in awe and following Powell’s every move closely. This was enthralling and he wasn’t even jumping.

When you watch the videos on YouTube or television, you can’t quite fathom what Powell really managed to achieve on a hot humid night in Tokyo’s Olympic stadium 20 years ago. But when you see the distance spread out right in front of you, one can’t help but be astounded. On that night, he was Superman, Batman, the Green Hornet… all the super heroes you can think of — rolled into one.

“I felt like I was flying. I didn’t think that record would last that competition, let alone 20 years,” said Powell. And he had reason to think that way.

Lewis and Powell had battled in an epic competition during the World Championships in which they landed four of the seven best jumps in event history. Powell walked away with the gold medal and a still valid world record of 8.95 metres.

“I don’t know if long jump is stagnating,” said Powell when he was asked how the record still stands. “It is sad for me to see the state in which the sport is right now. It is a sport where some of the best athletes ever have competed and now it seems like they have no one to learn from. They just don’t seem to be doing the right things.”

And one of the wrongs of the athletics world is doping. It was bad in late 1980s with the Ben Johnson scandal and so on. But it’s worse now. Athletes all over the world are testing positive and that can never be good news for the sport.

“Most times athletes end up using performance enhancing drugs because their coaches tell them to do so,” said Powell. “As for myself, my coaches told me I didn’t need to that. I could achieve the results just by working hard.”

“Plus it’s cheating. To me that matters. When I talk to my daughters I know I did the right thing. It’s like “your dad was pretty good.” And I am not lying. So for me to cheat to win isn’t the right thing,” he further added.

But as more athletes are being caught, a reputation is being built up, a pretty unsavoury one at that. The public perception is that all athletes take performance enhancing supplements. That can’t be good… never is. But Powell believes that number of stars being caught shows how much the IAAF wants to keep the sport clean.

“Athletics is one of the few sports which is willing to burst its stars. So it shows we are taking it seriously,” said Powell. “So if you are trying to use some dope you are taking a big risk. Athletics has been at the forefront in taking control in matters of dope.”

IAAF may be looking out to bust its doped stars but Powell is really happy to hear that one of India’s finest is making a comeback.

“When you take time off it becomes very difficult. But Anju (Bobby George) is a very talented athlete. She is very talented. She works very hard. If she remains healthy, she has a good chance of making a comeback,” said Powell who had helped coach the India to her World Championship bronze at Osaka in 2007.

“Athletes now can compete to their mid and late 30s if they take care of their bodies. And sometimes when women have children, they come back stronger. So I feel for her it’s worth the effort.”

The greatest long jump battle ever: Carl Lewis versus Mike Powell in Tokyo