Team Perfect Method has been set up by the 55-year-old American with the aim of finding and developing track and field athletes in the United States who have the ability to one day feature at the Olympic Games.

"I am focused on getting Americans ready to make the Olympic team," the former US sprinter and long jumper who is an assistant track coach at UH told the Houston Chronicle.

"Most of the athletes who run for Team Perfect Method will be UH athletes, and UH is allowing us the opportunity to allow athletes to stay in Houston and train here and be part of it.

"The whole idea is the minute you step on the UH campus, you don't have to change anything until your career ends.

"A lot of schools don't allow that.

"But I believe Houston is the best city for high school track and field in the country, so it's about keeping people here."

Lewis said that professional athletes joining the team would also be working with his former sprint rival and now head track coach at UH Leroy Burrell, along with Kyle Tellez, son of his former coach at the Santa Monica Track Club (SMTC) Tom.

"We have a team management system set up for them, and [the athletes] can set up their own representation," he said.

"We will populate this team with UH people."

Lewis added that he will also be drawing upon techniques learned from Tellez, as he seeks to market training tips for recreational and younger athletes under a Perfect Method banner, in partnership with the Amateur Athletic Union.

Lewis said Perfect Method will offer web seminars, videos and discussion groups that will give runners and jumpers quick access to training tips.

"I drive down the street and see somebody jogging, and I think, 'I wish their form was better, because they'll be hurting in two years'," he said. 

"Or I'll see a high school kid who says he's been injured every year, and I can tell him why."

Lewis’ club will be doing for UH graduates what SMTC - set up as a post-collegiate track club by Joe Douglas in 1972 - did for him once he joined it after finishing his studies at the university in 1979.

At its peak in the 1980s, SMTC boasted a fearsome roster of sprinting talent, including Lewis and Burrell, who swapped the world 100 metre record between them four times.

Other elite sprinters were attracted to the club including Lewis’ sister Carol, Joe DeLoach, who beat Lewis to the 1988 Olympic 200m title.

Floyd Heard, Kirk Baptiste and Mike Marsh, the 1992 Olympic 200m champion, were also members of the club.

In 1991, the SMTC quartet of Marsh, Burrell, Heard and Lewis set a world 4x100m at the Herculis meeting in Monaco.

But those glory days are long gone for SMTC, which now focuses on a relatively small group of foreign middle-distance runners.

Among the prize targets for Lewis will be Cameron Burrell, Leroy’s son, who clocked 9.93sec as third fastest qualifier in the heats at the NCAA Track and Field Championships taking place in Oregon.

Team Perfect Method has already signed up LeShon Collins, the 23-year-old former UH sprinter, who was the lead-off runner for the US team that won the 400m relay at the recent International Association of Athletics Federations World Relays in The Bahamas.

"Coach Carl is developing miniature Carl Lewises and Leroy Burrells and Floyd Heards," Collins said. 

"Don't tell him, but I think we might even be better than them when all is said and done. 

"We might be even better than Santa Monica."