Frederick Carlton “Carl” Lewis (b. 1.07.1961/XNUMX/XNUMX) is little known in Russia both as an athlete and as a promoter of veganism. And in vain, because if, for example, the famous boxer and now no less famous vegetarian Mike Tyson changed his eating habits already at the end of his (overshadowed by several convictions) career, then Carl Lewis, “the best athlete of the XNUMXth century” according to the IOC, has achieved the zenith of his fame – and his best form – a year after switching to a vegan diet. In other words, it’s safe to say – and Carl himself insists on this – that veganism helped Carl become one of the greatest athletes of all time. Nine-time Olympic champion (1984-1996), eight-time world champion, ten-time world record holder in sprinting and long jump – Kal Lewis, who competed for the United States, is a real national hero in this country, or, as they say, an “idol” . Twice he was recognized as the best athlete in the world, he is one of the 25 most powerful athletes of the XNUMXth century according to a survey by the International Sports Press Association (AIPS), and the International Association of Athletics (IAAF) even recognized him as “the best athlete of the XNUMXth century.” Lewis is one of only three Olympians to have won singles gold in the same discipline (long jump) four times in the entire history of the Games – in four consecutive Olympics! Lewis is also one of only four Olympians to have won nine gold medals in their lifetime at the Games. The popular American magazine “Sports Illustrated” justifiably named Lewis “Olympian of the century”. With a total of 17 Olympic and World Championship gold medals, Carl Lewis is undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest athletes. In the sports environment, he is called “the best athlete of all time”, and the fans call him “King Carl” or “son of the wind.” Carl’s parents were athletes: his father, Bill, coached track and field students at the university, and his mother, Evelyn, was a fairly successful runner, participated in competitions, although she did not take first place (the maximum was sixth). Karl himself was so thin as a child that the doctor advised him to introduce him to sports so that he would gain a little weight. Parents heeded this advice, and Carl took up football, American football, athletics, and diving. However, in childhood he did not show any special sports talents, many of his peers were stronger and faster than him. “King Carl” later recalled that even his sister Carol overtook him as they raced down the path around the house. (By the way, she later became the silver medalist of the 1984 Olympics, and twice the bronze world champion, all three medals for the long jump.) However, when Karl was 10 years old, his father sent him to study with the famous Jesse Owens, a four-time gold medalist Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. – the very “Nazi Olympics” of Hitler, which marked the beginning of the tradition of the Olympic torch relay and formed the basis of the cult film Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl. By the way, Jesse Owens – an African American, like Karl – was the first medalist and the most outstanding athlete at this Olympics, and subsequently he was often asked why Hitler did not shake his hand (and he should not have been according to the regulations). It is also curious that Owens managed to set a kind of record: on May 25, 1935, he set as many as six world records in athletics within 45 minutes! Be that as it may, Owens was an outstanding athlete, and a good coach, and he took little Carl seriously. Successes were not long in coming: at 13, Karl jumped 5,51 meters, at 14 – 6,07 meters, at 15 – 6,93 meters, at 16 – 7,26 and at 17 – 7,85, XNUMX m Of course, such successes did not go unnoticed, and the boy was accepted into the US national track and field team, which allowed him to participate in the Pan American Games in San Juan, Puerto Rico (1979). Young Karl jumped 8,13 meters – a result that Jesse Owens himself showed 25 years ago! It became clear that Karl was a future national hero. (Since we started to draw parallels between Lewis and Mike Tyson’s athletic and vegetarian careers, it’s interesting to remember that “Iron Mike” was also recognized as a future champion at an early age of 13). Lewis is unique not so much because he set world records one after another in the long jump, hundred meters and other disciplines. The really amazing thing is how he was able to switch from one discipline to another within the same competition. So, participating in four Olympics, Lewis won ten different types of programs, winning 9 gold medals (and one silver)! Sports doctors repeatedly convinced Carl that it was impossible to combine sprint and long jump. But Karl knew that the advice of doctors should sometimes be taken critically: when he was 12 years old, he deeply injured his right knee, and the doctors said that he would never be able to jump again due to a tendon injury – but Karl did not believe them even then. Lewis is used to winning no matter what and against the odds. He was an hour late for his first competition (in San Juan in 1979) because he was given the wrong schedule; this did not prevent him (after an explanation with the judges) from performing brilliantly and showing an outstanding result. On another occasion, later, Lewis barely made it to the US Olympic team at the 1996 Atlanta Games, and then struggled to qualify for the finals. To win the final, he needed all three jumps laid down by the rules – but his last, third jump broke the world record, and the “son of the wind” took his rightful first place in these competitions. What is the secret of the success of Carl Lewis, which allowed him to turn from an asthenic child into the best athlete of all time? Of course, here is the favorable heredity of the parents-athletes, and a wonderful coach who took the future champion “in circulation” as early as adolescence. Of course, Karl grew up in a favorable and purely athletic atmosphere, one might say, from infancy “breathed the air of sports.” But this, of course, is not all. “King Carl” himself claims that proper – vegan – nutrition has played a significant role in his truly outstanding sports career. Even as a child, Karl loved vegetables, preferring them to other foods. Mother (remember, she herself was a professional runner) encouraged such an aspiration, because. was an ardent supporter of healthy eating. However, the father of the “son of the wind”, who, by the way, did not participate in competitions himself, but only trained track and field students, was an avid meat eater, and also forced his family to eat meat regularly. By the way, Lewis’ father died of cancer in 1987. Noticing that he was starting to gain weight (and this is tantamount to defeat for an athlete), young Karl decided to fight him by skipping meals, usually breakfast. In the morning, for example, Karl did not have breakfast, later he ate a light lunch, and in the evening, as he admits, he ate himself to satiety – and went to bed! Carl would later write in the preface to his vegan cookbook that it was “the worst diet ever” because You need to eat evenly throughout the day, and certainly no later than 4 hours before bedtime. In May 19990, Karl noticed that the “diet” he had chosen was clearly undermining his health, and he was determined to change it, although he did not yet know how. However, here he was lucky: within a few weeks after making such a proactive decision, Karl met two people who completely and forever changed his ideas about proper sports nutrition – and healthy nutrition in general. The first of these was Jay Kordic (b. in 1923) is a well-known American athlete and a world-famous raw foodist who independently recovered from bladder cancer thanks to a diet of freshly squeezed juices. Having learned the sad diagnosis, Kordic refused official treatment, and instead locked himself in his apartment in Manhattan and made himself fresh juice every day from 6 am to 6 pm, a total of 13 glasses of carrot and apple juice; besides this, he did not take any other food. It took Jay 2,5 years of a “freshly squeezed” diet, but the disease was eventually defeated – in such a unique way. Over the next 50 years, Kordic traveled around the United States promoting “juicing” (play on words, two meanings: slang. “swing” and literally “squeeze juice”). By the way, the inventor of the first commercially successful juicer in the United States (the legendary and still sold Norwalk Hydraulic Press Juicer), also an American, Norman Walker – Jay’s friend and colleague – lived to be 99 years old! Anyway, Jay met Carl, showed him his juicer, and advised him to drink at least 1,5 liters of fresh juice a day to be healthy and win competitions. This was, of course, a complete surprise to Karl, who was used to the usual “full” diet, which included meat. Another person who influenced Carl Lewis was Dr. John McDougal, a physician who in those days had just published a book on “new-vegetarian” – that is, as they say now, vegan nutrition, and advertised it. McDougal finally convinced Carl to switch to a strict vegetarian, that is, vegan, diet, and even made him promise to do so. Two months after that conversation – fateful for athletics of the twentieth century! – Karl went to competitions in Europe (he was then 30 years old). Then he decided to act without delay – to fulfill his promise. The transition to a new type of food was very abrupt for him. As Karl himself admits, “on Saturday I still ate sausages, and on Monday I switched to veganism.” It wasn’t difficult for Lewis to go completely vegan, but getting himself to eat regularly throughout the day without skipping meals was the hardest part. He also recalls that it was not easy for him to give up salt, the food seemed insipid – so at first he added lemon juice to food to somehow compensate for the missing taste. The next spring—eight months after going vegan—Carl hit a rough patch. He trained for many hours a day, ate vegan, drank juice – and yet he felt lethargic, weak. Carl began to think that it would be nice to eat meat – in order to “make up for the lack of protein.” Realizing that this could not continue, he turned to Dr. McDougal, who “turned” him into a vegan. The doctor examined him, got acquainted with his diet – and suggested a simple solution: eat more! Thus, the intake of calories should have increased, bypassing the protein from meat. It worked! Karl increased his daily calorie intake, drank 1,5-2 liters of juice every day, and after a short time he realized that he felt great. Strength returned to him, and he forever forgot about the “meat protein”! Two months later, Karl was at the peak of his sporting glory, having accomplished the seemingly impossible. On a momentous day on August 25, 1991, at the World Championships in Athletics in Tokyo, Lewis finished first in the 100 meters, winning the gold medal in the championship’s most prestigious race – and setting a new world record (9,86 meters in XNUMX seconds). Carl said at the time: “It was the best race of my life!” His record then held out for another three years, and the vegetarian diet remained with Karl for life. The first year of the transition to a vegan diet was for Lewis and the most successful period in his career as an athlete. Carl Lewis is convinced that it was the transition to a vegan diet that contributed to his success as an athlete, and that it is the vegan diet that can increase the performance of an athlete while maintaining a minimum weight. Now Lewis is 51 years old, he feels great, is in good shape and has not gained excess weight. He claims to have eaten more, but is not gaining weight due to the fact that he consumes only vegan food: “I continue the vegan diet and my weight is under control. I like the way I look – and let it sound like bragging, but we all want to like the way we look. I like to eat more and feel great.” Lewis’s sports career ended back in 1996 (he then officially retired from big-time sports), but Karl’s active life was far from over. In fact, he even wanted to run for the New Jersey State Senate (Democratic) in 2011, but some formalities related to the required length of residence in the state got in the way. But Lewis starred in five feature films, and in 2011 he “lit up” among other prominent American athletes in an unusual documentary film “Challenging Impossibility” about how the famous Indian spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy, starting from the age of 54, began to lift record weights (max. 960 kg) by the power of meditation. Lewis also founded the Carl Lewis Foundation, a charitable foundation that helps teenagers and young families get active, acquire and maintain good health. In the foreword to Chef Jeannequin Bennett’s book of vegan recipes, Very Vegetarian, Lewis warns against “fast food.” He reminds that foods such as cookies, potato chips, candy, carbonated drinks are not nutritious and are extremely harmful, because. stuffed with chemicals. He also says that many types of cheese and dairy products contain saturated fats and cholesterol that clog arteries. Lewis argues that going vegan doesn’t necessarily mean having to shop for exotic foods. Curiously, in Bennett’s book, which tells how to learn how to cook simple vegan dishes from affordable products, there are several recipes from Lewis himself! Lewis writes in the preface to this curious publication: “I know many people think that eating like a vegetarian means sacrificing a lot, denying yourself. However, <…> the vegan diet is actually quite sybaritic in that vegans regularly consume the best of what nature has to offer.” He claims that it is by eating vegan that you can eat more without getting fat, while obesity is a real scourge of developed countries such as the USA, Great Britain, and Japan. Carl states: “Your body is your temple. Feed it right, then it will serve you well and live longer. Lewis also recalls responsibility, he says: “You decide what and how to eat, no one can force you to eat what you do not want”!
2022-11-11