BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : HIS BYLINE IS ONLY A LINE

The world’s fastest journalist, Carl Lewis, files this report:

“First, I do not have a contract with L’Equipe,” the European magazine that has been running articles supposedly written by Lewis during the Olympics.

“Second, I have no financial arrangements, none,” with any other publications, including American newspapers that also have been publishing Carl’s, uh, coverage.

“Jeffrey Marx (a writer) has been doing some interviews with me for his column. It’s no different than doing any other interviews,” Lewis said.

Well, no.

When a writer’s name appears on a story, more often than not, he or she actually wrote it.

And those TV commercials for L’Equipe shown here in which Lewis sits down at a typewriter and invites everyone to read his first-hand accounts?

Simply Carl sitting down to be interviewed, apparently.

Athletes are forbidden by the International Olympic Committee from being employed as journalists except for publications in their hometowns. Sprinter Michael Johnson, for instance, is doing “guest columns” for the Dallas Morning News.

U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Moran said his organization is satisfied that Lewis is not in violation of the IOC’s policy.

As for that cellular phone call Lewis was seen making from the Olympic opening ceremony?

“That was an interview,” Lewis said. “Somebody called me.”

Probably collect.

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.