Lewis Finally Has Run for Book : World track: At last, he has a record he feels he can call his own after winning fastest 100 meters with time of 9.86 seconds.

Carl Lewis has been track and field’s most accomplished athlete for the last eight years and unquestionably ranks among the sport’s best of all time, but never has there been one moment that so perfectly punctuated his remarkable career as the one he experienced Sunday night.

While it has been suggested cynically that Lewis’ exaggerated victory celebrations were contrived, perhaps because there were so many of them that they lost their spontaneity, there was little doubt that he felt genuine emotion when he looked back at the automatic timer on the track after winning the 100 meters at the World Championships to see a reading of 9.86 seconds, a world record.

As a near-capacity crowd in the 62,000-seat National Stadium that included Emperor Akihito and Empress Michigo stood and cheered, creating waves of sound uncharacteristic for generally reserved Japanese audiences, Lewis seemed to withdraw into his own private space. His eyes glazed over momentarily, then tears began to well.

“It was a numb feeling,” he said. “To be 30 years old and get my first true world record, that means something. I felt I could run that fast. I knew I had to run that fast.”

He did indeed, because five other men covered the distance in under 10 seconds. Completing a U.S. sweep of the medals, Leroy Burrell finished second in 9.88 and Dennis Mitchell was third in 9.91. Great Britain’s Linford Christie set a European record of 9.92, Frankie Fredericks of Namibia set an African record of 9.95 and Raymond Stewart of Jamaica set a national record of 9.96.

The fastest 100-meter race previously occurred in the 1988 Summer Olympics at Seoul, where four men had times under 10 seconds. But the world-record time of 9.79 that Canadian Ben Johnson ran to win the race was invalidated when he tested positive for an anabolic steroid.

Lewis’ second-place time of 9.92 at Seoul stood as the world record for almost two years, but he never seemed entirely comfortable with the notion that he earned it in the drug laboratory instead of on the track. He confessed that he was relieved when his Santa Monica Track Club teammate, Burrell, stripped him of it last June, running a 9.90 at the national championships to Lewis’ 9.93.

Burrell, 24, established himself as the world’s dominant sprinter last year, when he was ranked No. 1. In their last six meetings before Sunday night, dating to July, 1990, Burrell won five.

But Lewis served notice upon arriving in Tokyo that he did not intend to remain No. 2 to his Houston training partner and protege. Lewis had the best time among qualifiers in all three rounds leading to the final, including a 9.80 in the quarterfinals Saturday that could not be considered for record purposes because of a tail wind of 4.3 meters per second. The legal limit is 2.0.

In Sunday’s semifinal, Lewis ran a legal 9.93. Minutes later, in the fastest semifinal ever, Burrell finished first in 9.94, followed by Mitchell and Christie, both in 9.99.

With Johnson watching from a seat near the finish line, one row in front of two of Japan’s most famous sumo wrestlers, the stage was set for a historic final.

But, as often is the case, Lewis was almost not there when the curtain rose. He was the last man out of the blocks and was still in sixth place at 20 meters. He finally settled into his smooth, efficient stride at the midway point, pulled even with Christie at 80 meters and caught Burrell between 10 and 15 meters later.

“He’s without a doubt the greatest sprinter of all time,” said a frustrated Christie, 31, who has been trying for close to a decade to catch Lewis. “He’s got that 10-foot stride. When he gets going, he’s like a choo-choo train.”

Burrell, who is blind in his right eye, said later that he never saw Lewis coming and thought until near the end that he would win. When he sensed Lewis was upon him, Burrell desperately leaned toward the finish line. But Lewis had already run through it.

“I said, ‘Oh God, I’m behind,’ ” said Burrell, who is more compact and stronger than Lewis but does not have the textbook form of his teammate. “He maintained, and I died. Everybody wrote him off when I was beating him. But I knew what was going on. I knew he was going to be ready here.

“Of course, I’m disappointed that I lost. I think I could have done better. But, hey, I broke the world record. Somebody else just broke it a little better than I did.”

Asked to describe the difference between their styles, Burrell said: “His knees come up so high that it’s ridiculous. I can’t do that. Carl can maintain his speed really, really well. I get to a certain point and it’s like hope and pray I get there first.”

They have been close friends since Lewis recruited Burrell to the University of Houston from Lansdowne, Pa., which is about 25 miles from Lewis’ hometown of Willingboro, N.J. Mitchell, 25, is from nearby Atco, N.J., another Philadelphia suburb in the Delaware Valley.

While neither Lewis nor Burrell still competes collegiately, they remained in Houston to train under Tom Tellez, who counts five of the fastest 15 sprinters in the world this year among his number. Lewis said that he has maintained his enthusiasm for sprinting because of the competition he faces daily, especially from Burrell.

“There’s no way I could have done this without Leroy,” Lewis said. “He ran a 9.88. No humpty can run a 9.88, and I have to race against him in practice every day. I had to run the best race of my life to beat him, and it was close. If I had run 1% less than the best I’ve ever run, I would have lost.”

The admiration is mutual.

“Carl is the greatest athlete track and field has ever seen,” Burrell said. “I’m just glad to have been part of this tonight.”

Although Ben Johnson’s body might have been obscured as he sat in a section of the National Stadium near the finish line, his fame has not been.

Reporters sought him out to predict the winner of the 100-meter final, the most glamorous race at track and field World Championships.

“Leroy Burrell,” he told some.

“Carl Lewis,” he told others.

But he had time, and the right time, for all who approached him.

He said that the winner would finish in 9.86 seconds, which indeed was Lewis’ time as he broke the world record.

That is still slower than the 9.83 that Johnson ran in the 1987 World Championships at Rome and the 9.79 that he ran in the 1988 Summer Olympics at Seoul. But after he tested positive for an anabolic steroid at Seoul, his time there was voided, and, a year later, so was his time at Rome.

After serving a two-year suspension, he is here as a member of Canada’s 400-meter relay team. He finished fourth in the Canadian national championships, failing to qualify for a place in the 100 meters. His best time this year is 10.31. Accustomed to only the finest accommodations in the past, he is sharing a small hotel room with two teammates, a hurdler and a race-walker.

“It’s not a good feeling,” he said of watching the 100-meter final from the stands. “I know that I can still run, and I will prove that to people. I know my strength is still there. It takes time to get it back.”

He said he will have it back by the 1992 Olympics.

“Whatever they run here, I will run faster in Barcelona,” he said.