Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Born |
Birmingham, Alabama, United States |
August 8, 1963 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Height | 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 72 kg (159 lb) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sport | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sport | Track and field athletics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Club | Santa Monica Track Club | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Carol LeGrant Lewis (born August 8, 1963) is an American former track and field athlete who specialized in the long jump. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she is the sister of Olympian Carl Lewis.
She first came to prominence as a high school athlete while at Willingboro High School in New Jersey, setting the high school indoor long jump record at 21' 7.5" (6.59 meters) in 1981. She later went to the University of Houston, where she had followed her older brother. At Houston, she won 2 National Collegiate Athletic Association long jump championship titles in 1983: 21-11 3/4 and 1985: 22-1. She also joined her brother on the Santa Monica Track Club. She first competed internationally at the 1980 Olympic Boycott Games, taking the silver medal with a jump of 6.60 meters. She won the Dial Award that year in recognition of her achievements. She won the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships for the first time in 1982, the first of four National championships. Her 6.81m jump from that competition is the current United States, North American and Pan American Junior record. Further success came in 1983, with a win at the NCAA Outdoor Championships and bronze medal at the 1983 World Championships in Athletics.
After winning the Olympic Trials, she represented the United States at the 1984 Summer Olympics and managed to finish in ninth place, aged twenty. The following year she won the NCAA Outdoor Championships for a second time and took bronze at the World Cup in Athletics. In Zürich in August that year, Lewis reached her peak, setting a personal best and breaking the American record in the long jump twice at the same track meeting. Her record of 7.04 m stood for two years until it was beaten by Jackie Joyner-Kersee.