'If people say I was on drugs I get it, but I was better than anyone else,' says outspoken Athletics legend CARL LEWIS... as he gives both barrels to the youth of today and calls out 'childish' Daley Thompson

Forty years after he announced himself as the fastest man on the planet, Carl Lewis still shows no signs of slowing down. ‘Every year I do something I never thought I would do, something crazy,’ says the nine-time Olympic champion.

‘I tried to bench press 300lbs (136kg) when I turned 60. I sky dived at 61. I’m 62 now and I want to do a split. At 63, I am going to scuba dive 63ft.’

And Lewis has already got a goal in mind for when he is 67 - lighting the Olympic flame at Los Angeles 2028. ‘I don’t want to say too much because then they will probably not do it,’ he says. ‘But it would just be amazing for me to do that.’

The American would seem the obvious candidate. After all, he was the man who lit up LA the last time the Olympics were held there in 1984, winning a famous four gold medals in the 100metres, 200m, 4x100m relay and long jump.

Lewis was just 23 then. Now he is a grandfather approaching official retirement age. Yet, as he sits with Mail Sport on the terrace of his five-star hotel in the Bahamas, he looks as athletic as ever, his muscular frame filling out his polo shirt and shorts.

Despite his reputation for being cold and aloof, the Son of the Wind is warm and welcoming on the afternoon we meet. But, as soon becomes clear over the course of our chat, the big ego and sharp tongue remain. First in Lewis’ firing line: the youth of today.

‘I don't see anyone jumping and doing the sprints now,’ he begins, battling to be heard over the horn of a Caribbean cruise ship nearby. ‘I don’t think our culture is raising kids to do that any more.

‘It’s just not in the culture to work that hard. What I had to go through, a kid now would be like, “Oh no, got to stop, mental health”.

‘The only reason I won four was because I tried it. They talk about how Michael Jordan always hit the clutch shot. Well, that’s because he wasn’t afraid to take it.’

Lewis remains the last track and field athlete to win four gold medals at the same Games. Only one other man has done so in the three sprint events and long jump – his hero Jesse Owens at Berlin 1936.

‘Jesse was definitely the impetus to it,’ admits Lewis about his quadruple quest. ‘But the Jesse part was the personal bit. There was also the business side. In those days, the world’s fastest human was money, notoriety, recognition. It was all the things that I needed and wanted.

‘I realised if I could win all four, then I could take the sport wherever. I really wanted to be a global superstar and I worked for it.’

Lewis was so confident his worth would rocket after LA that he turned down a lucrative deal with Coca-Cola before LA. His agent Joe Douglas memorably said: ‘When Carl negotiates his contracts after the Olympics, he’ll be just as valuable as Michael Jackson.’

But Lewis knew his plan for superstardom would be in tatters if he failed to win his first event at the ’84 Games – the 100m. ‘It's really hard to articulate what the pressure was on that race,’ he recalls. ‘If I had lost then the story was over - and I had three events to go.’

Lewis ultimately won comfortably in a time of 9.99sec. But he was criticised for taking a USA flag from a spectator and carrying it around the track on his victory lap, a celebration never previously seen in athletics. ‘A lot of things I did then were controversial and now they're normal,’ he says with a smile.

More controversy followed in his next final. An expectant LA crowd had come to see Lewis break Bob Beamon’s 1968 long jump world record of 8.90m, partly fuelled by a TV advert in which Beaman said: ‘I hope you make it, kid.’

Yet after Lewis opened with what turned out to be a winning leap of 8.54m, he fouled his next effort and then skipped his four remaining jumps to conserve his energy for his next two events. Despite winning gold, he was roundly booed.

Lewis blames the sport’s powerbrokers for not explaining his situation to spectators. ‘I totally get it,’ he says on the jeers. ‘The crowd had no idea and they were never educated by the people that should have educated them.

‘Remember, that was in the middle of me fighting for professionalism. So the IAAF (now World Athletics) were totally against me. No one came to my defence because they were trying to destroy me.

‘It was like, “This is the guy that's pushing for professionalism, that’s brash, that's in entertainment. He's going to become a freaking global superstar and blow everything up. We got to stop this”.’

Yet nobody could stop Lewis. Two days later, he won the 200m in an Olympic record 19.80sec. However, he then found himself at the centre of another storm when Britain’s Daley Thompson, who had just retained his decathlon title, wore a T-shirt to his press conference that read, ‘Is the world’s second greatest athlete gay?’, amid rumours of Lewis’ sexuality.

‘I thought it was childish then and I still do,’ says Lewis, who has a son, Bakim, with his wife, Maria. ‘Daley is older than I am, but all of a sudden we had switched places on the intellectual side.

‘I was really focused on how could I make the sport better and he was being childish with a T-shirt.

‘I was so big in the sport and unfortunately the vast majority of athletes were against me. When I started pushing for all these reforms, the athletes didn’t support me.

‘I didn’t have much of a relationship with most athletes. It wasn’t a negative thing but to me track was my job. I was called aloof and arrogant. And I get it now. I was arrogant because I said I’d win four - and I did it.’

Indeed, Lewis completed his historic quadruple when he anchored the USA’s 4x100m relay quartet to victory with the only track and field world record of the Games. Yet the avalanche of endorsements he expected did not come, largely because of his negative public image. Even now, Lewis continues to divide opinion. Not that he cares.

‘My name and brand are known by over three billion people,’ he adds. ‘So at any given moment, hundreds of millions of people are lighting my ass up and hundreds of millions of people are saying, “He’s the greatest thing that’s ever lived”.’

As far as Lewis is concerned, his four in ’84 was not actually his greatest achievement. That, he says, was claiming his fourth straight long jump gold medal at Atlanta 1996.

‘I tried four times to win four gold medals in a Games and only did it once,’ he says. ‘So the proudest is four in a row. The longevity. When I was in Atlanta, there was a guy that said, “My father took me to see you in LA, and now I am here with my son”. That was pretty crazy.’

Of course, the most contentious of his nine gold medals – a haul that has only been surpassed by US swimmer Michael Phelps – was his gong from the 100m at Seoul 1988.

Lewis finished second in that race, but had his medal upgraded two days later when Canadian Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold – and world record of 9.79sec - for testing positive for anabolic steroid stanozolol.

It remains one of biggest scandals in Olympic history, but Lewis surprisingly says: ‘I don't look at that as a negative. That might be the most important moment in drug testing sports history - and I was a part of that moment.’

That 1988 final is now known as the ‘dirtiest race in history’ and not just because of Johnson. Five of the other seven athletes in the race subsequently went on to test positive or be involved in the use or supply of performance-enhancing drugs - including Lewis.

In 2003, it emerged that he had failed three tests at the 1988 US Olympic trials, yet he was cleared of inadvertent doping after claiming he had only taken an over-the-counter herbal remedy, which turned out to contain three banned stimulants.

The US Olympic Committee were accused of a major cover-up. But Lewis is at pains to point out that the level of stimulants found in his sample would now register a negative result. ‘We know now it means nothing,’ he insists. ‘It’s not even close.

‘If people want to say that I was on drugs, I get it. But I remember in 1983, when I set the American 200m record, I went across the line and, spiritually, I was like, “I am just so much f****** better than them. I have been given more talent than them. Don’t f*** it up”. That’s really what inspired me.

‘I get people from time to time saying, “Oh, Ben really won the race”. But I’m just like, “God bless you”.’

Despite his credibility being hit by the 2003 revelations, Lewis has never shied away from speaking out on doping. In 2008, after Usain Bolt broke both the 100m and 200m world records, Lewis controversially queried whether the Jamaican was clean, saying: ‘For someone to run 10.03 one year and 9.69 the next, if you don’t question that in a sport that has the reputation it has right now, you’re a fool.’

Asked whether he still questions Bolt’s times, Lewis says: ‘I am 62 now, I don’t have time for drama any more. He is retired, I am retired. I hope everything is going wonderful for him. I know a lot of people in the sport miss him and I wish him the best.’

Does he think athletics is clean now? ‘I think there are still people,’ Lewis replies. ‘But in the sprints and jumps, look at the people. Sprinters got huge and they stayed huge, and now they are small again. There is something to that.

‘It’s really lazy for people to say, “So and so is on drugs” because there are a lot of differences from our time. Nutrition is better. The tracks are better. Shoes make a big difference. Those spikes are crazy. That's why they're running faster. But I think it's good. The technology, the innovation, I love all of it.

‘You live in your era. I ran 9.86 33 years ago and a lot of people have run 9.86 since. But you know what? I would have been on every podium since then apart from 2012.’

Since hanging up his spikes 27 years ago, Lewis has tried his hand as an actor, singer and politician. But he has since returned to athletics as head coach at the University of Houston. ‘I never wanted to coach, I don't know how that happened,’ laughs Lewis. ‘I thought when I retired I would have a shelf life - and it seems like that shelf life has lasted longer.’

Lewis is contracted with Nike until 2028 and will be working with them at the Paris Olympics. He also recently acted as an ambassador for World Athletics at the World Relays, which is what brings us to the Bahamas.

Intriguingly, he was signed up shortly after he took the governing body to task on social media over their radical plan to revamp the long jump, questioning whether it was an ‘April Fools’ joke’.

‘I am not going back from what I said because I don't agree with it and I don’t think it’s going to help,’ says Lewis on replacing the take-off board with a zone in a bid to eliminate fouls, which is currently being trialled.

‘The reason the rate of fouling is high is because the event is difficult. But that’s the beauty of the long jump. When you take away that challenge, you have created a new event.

‘Why is the long jump not popular? Because no one's jumping far. And I think the testing is going to show that people are still not going to jump further.’

Lewis might be scathing about the current standard of long jumpers, but he is more enthused about the quality of sprinters. He particularly likes American star Noah Lyles, who became the first man since Bolt to complete the 100m, 200m and 4x100m treble at a World Championships last year.

Lyles has since announced his ambition to emulate Lewis and win four golds at Paris 2024 by running in the 4x400m relay. When he was included in the US quartet in that event at the World Indoor Championships in March, there was outrage among other athletes.

But Lewis says: ‘I just did a commercial with Noah and he’s a great kid. I don't have a problem with someone saying, “I want to win another gold medal for America”.

‘Trust me, it's hard enough to win three. Let him focus on that. But if he wins the 100, 200 and 4x100, would everybody want him to run the 4x400? Absolutely. That could be wonderful for the sport.

‘The sport needs someone to be dominant because the public likes to attach to someone. Right now, there's no emotion to it. It's just like, “Who's going to win?”.’

That is a question Lewis says is impossible to answer when it comes to the men’s 100m at Paris 2024, pointing out there have been six different winners at the last six global championships.

He does, though, believe Britain’s Zharnel Hughes – who false started in the final at Tokyo 2020 but claimed a world bronze last year – is a serious contender.

‘I really like him,’ admits Lewis. ‘Honestly, I think he would have won in Tokyo if he didn’t false start because he looked great in the semi-final. I'm not saying that he’s going to win, but I think he's definitely one of the top guys.’

Interest in the 100m will only ramp up once a new Netflix series on sprinters airs shortly before the Olympics. Lewis, though, ends our interview with a warning that it will take more than just a TV show to save his beloved sport.

‘Of course I worry,’ he admits about athletics’ declining popularity. ‘Noah has a personality, but it's much bigger than him. Usain did a tremendous job but he didn't grow the sport. As big as he was, the sport financially went down during his tenure.

‘Sebastian Coe (World Athletics president) is very smart. But it's not going to change because of too many countries with self-interest.

‘We have way too many athletes and we should limit the amount that can actually go to the Diamond League to no more than 30. Then the Continental Tour, another number. Then after that, everyone needs to get job.

‘It's not easy, but it's real. The NBA doesn't have unlimited people playing. Every sport has a finite amount of people but ours does not. They need to focus on the ones that are great.’

And few have been greater than Frederick Carlton Lewis.