BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : FACING UP TO FAME OF A TRACK LEGEND

The face and image of a serious-looking Lewis are an inescapable advertising fact of these Olympics. A larger-than-life-sized photograph of the 100-meter world record-holder adorns a prominent billboard at the entrance to the Barcelona airport, long jumping with a video camera tucked under his arm. And numerous similar billboards are scattered the city.

But things are different in Zaragoza, the 2,000-year-old city 190 miles from Barcelona where a few of the soccer games are being played. Even so, distance didn’t prevent commercialism from rearing its head there, literally.

The other day, two reporters wandered the streets of Zaragoza, hopelessly lost. A solicitous Zaragozan stopped to give directions, busily diagraming streets on the back of a magazine he carried. The makeshift map was the now-familiar advertisement of Lewis.

Using a full head shot of Lewis as a map, the man clearly marked the way. Take a right at Carl’s nose, north along the forehead and right into his ear.

This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.