Carlos Lopes

Carlos Alberto de Sousa Lopes, GCIH, pron. IPA2|'kaɾluʃ 'lɔpɨʃ, (born February 18, 1947) is a former Portuguese long-distance athlete, winner of the marathon race at the 1984 Summer Olympics, in Los Angeles. He brought home Portugal's first ever Olympic gold medal along with a new Olympic record - 2:09.21

Born in Vildemoinhos, near Viseu, Portugal, Carlos Lopes worked as a stonecutter's helper. He wanted to play football at the local club, but his father opposed this, so he turned to other forms of athletics. In 1967 he was personally invited to join the remarkable athletics team of Sporting Clube de Portugal, and remained there until the end of his career in 1985. He was a very average long distance runner, until he made an astonishing breakthrough in 1976, aged 29.

Career

He started 1976 season with an easy win at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Chepstow, Wales. At the 1976 Summer Olympics, in Montreal, Lopes set the pace from 4 km mark and the only one to follow him was defending Olympic champion Lasse Virén. Virén passed Lopes with a lap to go to win the gold medal, with Lopes easily winning the silver medal.

He failed to regain his Cross-Country title, in Düsseldorf (1977), finishing second.

After the superb 1976 season, Lopes slipped back into the same relative obscurity in which he had been before 1976, failing to qualify for the Moscow Olympics due to several injuries.

He returned to his best, in 1982 in Oslo, when he broke the 10,000 m European record—27:24.39—which belonged to his teammate Fernando Mamede. The next year, he became cross-country world vice-champion, in Gateshead.

Lopes attempted his first marathon at the end of 1982 (New York), but he did not finish, because of an accident where he crashed into a spectator. But in his next marathon (Rotterdam), the following year, he finished a close (2 seconds) second to Rob de Castella from Australia with a European record time of 2:08:39. Lopes decided to run a 10,000 m at the first World Championships, in Helsinki, which he finished a disappointing sixth. After that he decided to concentrate to marathon.

1984 was Lopes's biggest year. He regained his cross-country world title, in New Jersey, in front of thousands of ecstatic Portuguese emigrants. In Stockholm, he helped Fernando Mamede win and beat the 10,000 m world record—27 min 13.81 s—finishing second.

An accident almost prevented Lopes from participating in the 1984 Olympics when, with a week to go, he was run over by a car, in Lisbon. Amazingly, he was not hurt. The Olympic marathon at Los Angeles was run in very hot and humid conditions, and as the favorites gradually fell away, it was the 37 year old Lopes who led the field into the stadium to win the gold medal, with a 200 m advantage and an olympic record where Portugal erupted in celebration with its 1st Olympic title ever. It stood until the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing where Kenyan Sammy Wanjiru broke Lopes's record with a time of 2:06:32, giving Kenya their first gold medal in the Olympic marathon.

Award

Later, Portuguese prime minister, Mário Soares, decorated Lopes with the Grand-Cross of the Order of the Infant ("Grã-Cruz da Ordem do Infante").

Last race

A year later, he won the cross-country world championship, held in Lisbon, for the 3rd time.

In the last major competitive race of his career, the 1985 Rotterdam marathon, Lopes took 53 seconds off the world's best marathon time, setting a new standard of 2:07.12, and becoming the first man to run 42.195 km in less than 2 h 8 min.

* L'Équipe: "Fantastic! Extraordinary! There aren't enough strong words to label Lopes Rotterdam achievement. In less than 3 years, he became the first man to approach the unreal. Who would think, 20 years ago, that a man would run the marathon at 20 km/h?"'

* Rotterdam press: "With his magic talent, Carlos Lopes took 54 seconds off the previous world best. With his fabulous pace he reached the world record with apparent ease. It's said he received US$150,000 just to come to Rotterdam, plus US$67,000 in prizes. A lot of money for a single man. But, in marathons' fantasy world, only a man—aged 38—is able to run it in 2:07.12: Carlos Lopes"."

After this, he went to Japan ran Tokyo's marathon, in honor of his late master Koboyashi, but (out-of-shape) he quit early. That was his last marathon, as he was later injured and said goodbye to Athletics, in late 1985.

External links

* [http://atletismo.no.sapo.pt/carlos.htm Profile]
* [http://www.carloslopes.d2d.pt/ Lisbon 2005/Carlos Lopes - Gold Marathon Memorial]
* [http://www.olympic.org/uk/athletes/heroes/bio_uk.asp?PAR_I_ID=31826 www.olympics.org]