75 DAYS TO THE BARCELONA GAMES : Jumping Ahead : Powell Isn’t Looking Back, but to 30 Feet and Beyond

When he answered the telephone call that brought a request for yet another interview, Mike Powell had a question of his own. “How long will it take?” One hour, he was told. That was fine, he said. He had one hour.

A few days later, at the appointed time, Powell answered the door at his Alta Loma home, greeted the visitor and said, “How long did you say this will take?” One hour, he again was told. “OK, I have a tight schedule,” he said and then, polite but firm, proceeded to make sure he stayed on it by intermittently announcing the number of minutes remaining in the interview.

Having conquered distance, the world record-holder in the long jump is working on time.

It is another Beamonesque challenge. Immediately after he won the spectacular long-jump competition in the 1991 World Championships at Tokyo, ending Carl Lewis’ 10-year winning streak and breaking Bob Beamon’s 23-year-old record of 29 feet 2 1/2 inches by two inches, Powell felt as if he were being swept away by the tsunami that Japanese weathermen had forecast for that hot, humid August night.

Photographers blinded him with their flashbulbs, reporters yelled out questions, competing television producers tried to steer him in their direction, meet officials clutched to his arms and tried to steer him in theirs. Disoriented, he looked to Lewis to throw him a life line. “Get used to it,” Lewis told him.

More than seven months later, in the quiet of his living room, Powell said, “I’m handling it.” Based on his impressive workouts of late, his fantastic projections for this summer and his relative peace of mind, there is no reason to believe otherwise. But that does not mean he is used to it. Earlier last week, while beginning to focus on his first outdoor competition of the year, at Modesto next Saturday, he spent eight hours one day and nine the next with NBC for a profile the network is preparing to air during the Summer Olympics at Barcelona, Spain.

If it is not the media demanding his time, it is someone who wants to present him with another award or to appear on behalf of another charity or a sponsor.

“It’s the price of fame,” said Brad Hunt, Powell’s manager. “I need two Mikes, one to shake hands and grin and one who has time to train hard enough so that the phone will keep ringing.”

If Powell, 28, jumps as far this year as he says he can, there will be opportunities to shake hands, grin and answer the phone for many years. Beamon has made a living at it for 24 of them.

Indeed, Powell is so excited about his prospects that it is a waste of time to ask him to relive the record-breaking jump. It is yesterday’s news. His account, which has not changed considerably since last August, is well- rehearsed by now and not particularly insightful. One suspects it no longer holds his interest.

He more or less confirmed that later, when he said: “I don’t want to talk about what I did. I prefer to talk about what I’m going to do.”

Besides, he said, he has watched the videotape at least a thousand times and concluded that his leap into immortality as the man who displaced Beamon in the record books is riddled with flaws.

“It was a good jump, but I wouldn’t call it Beamonesque,” he said.

That adjective became a part of the sport’s lexicon after Beamon’s incredible jump in the 1968 Summer Olympics at Mexico City, often referred to as the greatest single accomplishment in track and field’s history, broke the previous record by 21 3/4 inches. In the next 23 years, only one other man, Armenian Robert Emmiyan, eclipsed 29 feet, and that jump, like Beamon’s, was achieved in the thin air at high altitude.

In Tokyo, at sea level, Lewis had three 29-foot jumps. Nevertheless, his best, a wind-aided 29-2 3/4, was only good enough for second place behind Powell’s 29-4 1/2.

If that was not Beamonesque, he was asked, what is?

“Thirty-one feet,” Powell said. “I can jump 31 feet. I know that. I’m not saying, ‘Here’s a million dollars on the table; bet me.’ But there’s nothing crazy about saying I can jump 31.”

So much for the 30-foot barrier.

“Carl’s done 30-feet in the past with a foul; I’ve been close to it,” Powell said. “I know that’s going to go.”

When Powell’s 31-foot projection was repeated to his coach, he laughed.

“I think he’s blowing a little smoke there,” said Randy Hunt- ington by telephone from his Fresno office. “But I do think 30 feet is reachable, for sure. In fact, I think he could jump between (30-2 1/4 and 30-8 1/4). When I tell people that, they say, ‘You’re out of your mind.’ We’ll see.”

Huntington, a former assistant at Cal and Oregon and now a coach with the Keiser Track Club, found such a talented and willing pupil in Powell that their five-year plan took only four to produce a world record.

Powell, who was a better known as a high jumper and basketball player at Edgewood High in West Covina, showed promise as a long jumper at UC Irvine and, after transferring, at UCLA. But he needed direction, which he found when the world record-holder in the triple jump, former Bruin Willie Banks, introduced him to Huntington before the 1988 season.

“With his technical knowledge, all I had to do was apply it,” said Powell, who improved from sixth in the world in 1987 to third the next year, when he won the silver medal in the Summer Olympics at Seoul. “Thank God I met that guy.”

It has not been the smoothest of arrangements because Huntington, for the most part, coaches Powell by telephone from Fresno. “I have to re-create him every time I see him,” Huntington said. “You talk about being frustrated to the gills.”

But, he added, the challenge since last August has been more mental and emotional than physical.

That is not because Powell has changed.

“He hasn’t developed that SM attitude,” said Huntington, explaining after a pause that he was referring to the Santa Monica Track Club, the extremely successful, extremely self-assured band of athletes, including Lewis, who train in Southern California and Houston.

The trappings surrounding Powell, however, have changed considerably.

Huntington has tried to help him adjust to stardom, using experience he had in the past as an off-season conditioning coach for well-known athletes in other sports, such as Wayne Gretzky and Michael Chang.

“Gretzky’s demeanor, his presence, is just incredible,” Huntington said. “He is a star, but he can still wrap himself into a cocoon so that he can focus on what he has to do in the game. I think Mike is growing into that. But, right now, it’s the difference in a star and a blossoming star.”

Huntington feared that Powell’s star might be burning out earlier this year.

“Everything going on around him was, in some sense, good because it was an emotional break,” Huntington said. “I thought he should play with it, enjoy it, revel in it. But, at one point, I voiced my concern as strongly as I could. I really wanted him to get going. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it under control.’ I said, ‘OK, I hope you do.’ ”

Huntington was not the only person in the sport concerned. When Powell chose not to participate in last month’s Mt. San Antonio College Relays at Walnut, the first time he has missed that meet since the ninth grade, others speculated that the weight of the crown for the long jump’s new king was too heavy.

“Since Tokyo, a lot of things have come his way,” said Dan Shrum, the Mt. SAC meet director. “But with that comes a lot more pressure.”

Said Lewis: “He’s going through what I went through in ’83 and ’84. Everyone is pulling on you. Either you handle it or you get out. You don’t have any other choices.”

In fact, Powell did go to Mt. SAC.

Early during the week of the meet, he worked out there for the benefit of a Sports Illustrated photographer.

One of Powell’s jumps was measured at 28-2. The farthest he ever jumped in practice before this year was 26-4.

Back off, Powell told his doubters.

“I know what my plan is,” he said. “My goal for this year was not to get ready to jump at Mt. SAC. My goal is Barcelona.”

Anticipating a rematch at Barcelona that will be just as thrilling as their competition last August, when Powell had his monster jump on the fifth of his six tries and then paced nervously as Lewis followed that with two 29-footers, Huntington called the long jump “the premiere competition of the Olympics.”

There has been talk about a big-money, winner-take-all duel in Europe before the Olympics, but both sides have nixed it. “Too emotionally draining,” Powell said.

Actually, they will meet once before going to Barcelona, in late June in the U.S. Olympic trials at New Orleans, but Powell said that his focus there will not be on winning but on finishing among the top three for a guaranteed berth on the team.

“They’re not giving out the gold medal in New Orleans,” he said. “The only place they’re giving out the gold medal is Barcelona.”

Before last summer, Lewis, who will turn 31 in July, spoke of retiring from the long jump after the World Championships. But, after Powell broke Beamon’s record, Lewis said that he was newly motivated to come back and attempt to win an unprecedented third consecutive Olympic long jump gold medal.

Powell, perhaps in an effort to shift the pressure of expectation, said Lewis should be favored.

“I’ve only beaten him one time,” he said. “He’s beaten me 15.”

Powell and Lewis are not friends. But Powell said that no one should infer that they are enemies.

“I don’t know Carl,” Powell said. “We’ve had conversations, but we’ve never really sat down and talked. I saw him at a party after Mt. SAC and I said, ‘We’ve got to talk.’ He said, ‘Yeah, we do.’ I would like that.

“I have him to thank for the world record. He gave me incentive. If he hadn’t been there, jumping as far as he did all those years, I wouldn’t have done it.”

For his part, Lewis said that he respects Powell.

“He’s the best competitor I’ve ever had in the long jump,” Lewis said. “I would have said that before Tokyo. The difference in him and some of the others is that they wanted to beat me because it meant me losing. Mike wanted to beat me because he wanted to be No. 1. Mike approached it from a positive standpoint.”

As the world record-holder in the 100 meters, Lewis has an advantage over everyone else in the long jump because of his speed on the runway. He also is extremely consistent at getting every last centimeter out of his approach without stepping over the line in the Plasticine take-off board, a mistake committed so frequently by Powell that he is known as “Mike Foul.”

But when Powell gets a fair jump, as he proved at Tokyo, he has a much potential as anyone who ever competed in the event because of the exceptional arc of his take-offs. It is not coincidental that his only major title before last year came in a national slam-dunk contest.

This year, he has been trying to improve his form on the approach to enhance his speed. His model? Lewis.

“People tell me, ‘You look like Carl now,’ ” he said. “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. He’s the best one. Let’s figure out what he’s doing and try it.”

As formidable as Lewis is as an athlete, the quality Powell most admires is his competitiveness.

“I can’t count the number of times that I thought Larry Myricks or I had him only to see him come back on one of his last jumps to win, even if he had been jumping crappy all day,” Powell said. “In Tokyo, even after my jump, I was really afraid Carl would beat it.

“He’s a winner. But so am I. I know he wants to kick my butt at Barcelona, and I’m going to try my best to kick his butt. Tokyo was just a prelude to the whole thing.”