Athletics: Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: It has been a poor 24 hours for American sport. Two haloes extinguished, with Michael Jordan finally exiting the sport of basketball and Carl Lewis exposed as a charlatan. So much for no second acts in American life. The footnotes to both careers are tremendously disappointing, if for very different reasons.
Of all the athletes that lined up for Olympic 100 metres finals over the last century, Lewis was almost certainly the most naturally gifted, which makes his apparent betrayal of the discipline all the harder to stomach.
The US's history in the event is, not surprisingly, illustrious. In 100 years of Olympic 100 metres finals, beginning in Athens in 1896, the US won 13 of the possible 20 gold medals, having boycotted the Moscow games in 1980. Lewis's gold in Los Angeles in 1984 was probably the most celebrated since Jesse Owens's, as it set him up for his evangelical quest to match Owens's haul of four golds at one summer games, which, of course, he achieved.
The history of the sprint possesses a rich trove of unlikely stories and characters, many of which are detailed in David Wallechinsky's tome on the summer games, The Complete Book of the Olympics. Although Owens's rise to greatness in the maelstrom of Nazi Germany is universally hailed, other episodes are equally valuable.
My own favourite occurred in the 1920 race at Antwerp when a coach called Lawson Robertson walked around the starting line and persuaded several of the finalists that their chances of winning would be greatly improved if they downed his special tonic of a glass of sherry mixed with a raw egg. Although only Morris Kirksey was initially game, his fellow competitors feared - somewhat prophetically - that the potion would give him an advantage, so they swallowed their doubts with the vile drink and got on with it.
The 1952 final in Helsinki produced a photo finish between the top four athletes, with Jamaica's Herb McKinley the hot favourite to be given the verdict. As it turned out, Lindy Remegino of the US was judged to have won. Astonished to have even qualified for the Games, let alone to be considered as a gold medal winner, Remegino was reluctant to accept that he had crossed the line first. Legend has it he remarked to McKinley, "Gosh, Herb, it looks as though I won the darn thing."
Such was the Corinthian precedent Lewis had an obligation to maintain when he lined up for the 1988 race in Seoul. And Lewis, of course, was only too happy to portray himself as the anointed saviour of athletics, conducting himself in a sanctimonious manner that irritated not just his fellow athletes but entire nations. The fall-out from that final and Ben Johnson's comet fall toward demonisation was exacerbated by Lewis's coy maintenance of his holier-than-thou image and the loaded silence he cultivated throughout Johnson's initial rise as a sprinter.
What can you do but laugh at the fact that Lewis could persevere with such a priggish demeanour when now it seems he was cooking the chemicals just as keenly as poor old Johnson, a man socially backward and easily led - and treated with the same notoriety as a war criminal in the days and weeks after the Seoul 100 metres final? Given the way athletics has been ravaged by deceit and lies in the decade since, who will believe the tired excuse emanating from the Lewis camp yesterday that King Carl had innocently taken treatments for a cold in the lead-up to that race? His protest may be true, but it is unlikely that anybody will want to listen. The revelation now elevates the 1988 final onto a higher plateau in terms of crooked moments in sport. The Dirtiest Race of All Time is a hook people will not readily forget.
They say no one remembers who came second. Well, not in this case.
How about who came fifth? Given that the top four finishers have now been implicated with charges of substance abuse, perhaps it is time to acknowledge Brazil's Robson da Silva as the only source of light in that race, a man who finished on a time of 10.11 seconds, slower than the winning time achieved by Ralph Craig way back in 1912.
It is often forgotten that Michael Jordan was part of the 1984 US Olympic team along with Lewis. The Barcelona games of 1992 featuring the Dream Team will always be remembered as Jordan's Olympics, as he was the most famous athlete on the planet at that time. He probably still is.
Wednesday night's farewell game in Philadelphia, when the 40-year-old Jordan finished the regular NBA season with his under-achieving Washington Wizards franchise, was an inevitably shabby end to a sporting life that, at its most impressive, seemed akin to a revolution.
Jordan's career was such that it would have been inconceivable before he came along, and it remains inimitable now that he has promised to leave the stage to the younger, paler troop. At his best, he humbled the very game of basketball. But more than that, he spawned the endless show of sports endorsements that more and more are seen as the true rewards for athletic endeavour. Jordan had passed into pop culture as early as 1986, and the most chilling aspect of his ascent to American and then global icon was the reports of rich suburban men being murdered for making the mistake of wearing Air Jordan sneakers in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Jordan's last score as an NBA player came courtesy of the free-throw line - a fact some of his detractors would regard as apt, as it was often alleged he made it there easier than any other player.
There won't be another athlete to grip the imagination quite so forcefully as Jordan. Over the 15 years of his omnipotence and decline, sport has become a 24/7 global television affair. The images are too incessant and the choices too varied for any one athlete to command such undivided attention and awe. At least his accomplishments will never be called into question and are there to be enjoyed by coming generations that will probably find Jordan's multi-coloured sneakers and gold chain quaint. But there remains a nagging feeling that the man himself is not satisfied, that there should and could have been more. There is also the sense that basketball will be kind of pointless in his absence.
So Jordan leaves and within hours comes the news that the image we had of Carl Lewis has gone up in smoke. The weeks to come will be bitter for Lewis, who now faces the prospect of everything he held precious in his professional life being devalued beyond recognition. Roll back the clock to the Olympic ceremony of 1984 and you know that both of them could never have guessed at it all ending like this.
