FREDERICK CARL LEWIS
July 1, 1961
OLYMPIAN TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETE
AUTHOR, ACTOR, ACTIVIST AND HUMANITARIAN
He is an American and is the most successful Olympic track and field athlete, who won 9 Olympic medals, including nine gold, and 10 World Championships medals, including eight gold and one silver in 1988. His career spanned from 1979 to 1996 when he last won an Olympic title and subsequently retired. He was born on July 1, 1961, in Birmingham, Alabama to His father, Bill who is was a teacher, and also an athlete that ran track and played football; his mother, Evelyn, was a world-class hurdler who represented the United States at the 1951 Pan-American Games. By the time Carl was born, the third of four children, the elder Lewis’s were coaching young athletes in track and field events. The family relocated to Willingboro, New Jersey.
His accomplishments as a world record breaker is still talked about as the greatest of all time in the field some has even referred to him as the king of the sport to date . In 1999, Lewis was voted “Sportsman of the Century” by the International Olympic Committee, elected “World Athlete of the Century” by the International Association of Athletics Federations. In 2000 his alma mater University of Houston named the Carl Lewis International Complex after him.. In 2001 Lewis was inducted into the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame. Again in the same year Sports Illustrated named the retired star its “Olympian of the Century,” while the International Olympic Committee named him its “Sportsman of the Century.”
A s an successful businessman he owns a marketing and branding company named C.L.E.G., which markets and brands products and services including his own.