"Liberace in Track Spikes" (1984)
Carl Lewis, Noah Lyles, and rediscovering America's joyful spirit.
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I.
On August 4, 1984, Carl Lewis streaked through the finish line of the 100-meter Olympic final in under 10 seconds. Then he co-opted a large American flag from a spectator, waved it above his head as he circled the Los Angeles Coliseum, and took his sweet old time. He lingered so long, in fact, wrote one reporter, that “the crowd grew still, apparently not sure how to react” to a man who had already earned a reputation as an arrogant showboat—a “Liberace in track spikes,” that reporter wrote.
Lewis was the most talented United States sprinter in a generation, but his arrogance did not register well in a nation that did not yet know what to do with a man like him, and that deprived him of a number of potential endorsement opportunities. And yet historically, Carl Lewis feels like he fit the moment, an era when the nation was rediscovering its sense of exceptionalism after a rough decade. Carl Lewis was pompous, but believing in American exceptionalism required a self-awareness of the pomposity of that very idea. Carl Lewis let us feel that again.
II.
There are certain vocations that call for a sense of hubris, and sprinting is one of those things. In order to be blindingly fast, you have to believe you’re blindingly fast, and in order to defeat others who are also blindingly fast, you have to believe that you’re faster than they are. Usain Bolt was so good that he almost stood above arrogance altogether; Noah Lyles, the first American to win the gold medal in the 100-meter dash in 20 years, wins medals by affecting a comically swaggering persona designed to intimidate his opponents and entertain the rest of us.
Lyles is the kind of wildly self-assured public figure America has grown accustomed to seeing over the course of the four decades since Carl Lewis won gold. But there’s a big difference between those who recognize they’re playing a role when they do this, and those who get lost in the role. I found myself rooting for Lyles, because he seemed to be entirely aware that he was a performer in a global television show. And I began wonder if Lyles could herald the dawn of a new age in America, a moment when the country begins to rediscover its playful self-confidence while leaving behind the kind of cruel egotism that’s defined the last decade.
III.
There’s been a joyfulness to these Olympics that felt absent in the COVID era: The very fact that Snoop Dogg has become a “happiness ambassador” for both the Games and for America itself feels like the kind of pleasant weirdness that’s been absent for the past eight years. And it’s too early to know if this is what the kids call a “vibe shift”; it’s too soon to recognize if this brief period of hopefulness is just a blip, or if the relentless fury and negativity and despondency that has defined the national conversation for the last eight years is finally starting to feel tiresome.
And yet Thursday afternoon, as an aging presidential candidate attempted to compare his speech inciting a failed insurrection attempt to the peak of the Civil Rights movement, I found myself wondering if anyone still bought this kind of empty swagger, or if we all could see it was an act now that it had been contrasted with something more hopeful.
So instead I changed the channel and decided to watch the USA men’s basketball team, led by two of the most joyful players in basketball history, come back from a deficit to defeat Serbia, and I watched Noah Lyles, who wound up winning the bronze in the 200 meters and revealed afterward that he’d tested positive for COVID. He seemed happy; or at least, as happy as a man with an unpleasant communicable respiratory disease could feel. He seemed relieved that the moment had passed, and that he could shed his persona and show us who he really was. He was not Carl Lewis, but he was already one of the great American sprinters of this or any era, and someday, we may look back on what he did and remember it as concurrent with the moment when America found its joy again.
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“And I began wonder if Lyles could herald the dawn of a new age in America, a moment when the country begins to rediscover its playful self-confidence while leaving behind the kind of cruel egotism that’s defined the last decade.”
Here’s hoping.
Here’s hoping for a vibe shift.