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GREENSBORO — Before the Nike ads and magazine covers, before the nine gold medals and world records, Carl Lewis was a scrawny kid chasing a dream, a kid just like all the others who stood in a drizzle at N.C. A&T to meet him.

“I always knew I could do something special in my life with the talent I had,” Lewis said between autographs. “Wouldn’t it be great if every kid out here could feel that way, too?”

The National Junior Olympic Track and Field Championships continued Wednesday with three Olympic champions — Lewis, hurdler Joanna Hayes and decathlete Dan O’Brien — showing up for autographs and giving words of encouragement for the 6,500 athletes.

Three meet records were broken on the first day, but all that seemed to take a back seat to the three Olympians.

Jacob GunderKline, 19, was still wearing the first-place medal from the 3,000 meter race walk when he managed to get Lewis’ autograph.

For GunderKline, it was a tossup over which seemed to make him happier: meeting Lewis or winning his race.

“When my parents hear about this, they won’t believe it,” said GunderKline, who lives in Miami, Ohio.

“My mom was a huge fan of his. She won’t care that I won. Just that I met Carl Lewis.”

Lewis, O’Brien and Hayes competed in AAU track and field, the precursor to what is now Junior Olympics.

O’Brien, who won the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, remembers competing in Los Angeles at a junior event and then hurrying to get his camera to take pictures of another junior track star competing after him: Lewis.

“It was the thrill of my life competing in those events and getting a chance to watch Carl run,” O’Brien said. “I know what an event like this can do for kids. It can spark them to go further, not just in track but school and life.”

For more than an hour, the line to meet the three Olympians snaked around Aggie Stadium.

All the athletes in town this week are too young to remember Lewis and O’Brien. Some have a vague recollection of Hayes, who won a gold medal in the 100 meter hurdles at the 2004 Athens Olympics. But nobody seemed to mind their heros were past their prime.

Amber Jack, 17, was just 3 when Lewis won his last gold medal. She hurriedly brushed her hair and wiped her face clean before getting her picture taken with him.

“It’s amazing to see him up close like that,” said Jack, who lives in Houston. “He still looks like he could go out and win another gold.”

Contact Robert Bell at 373-7055 or robert.bell@news-record.com