ESPN.com: Beamon made sport's greatest leap Beamon made sport's greatest leap By Larry Schwartz Special to ESPN.com Six seconds. That's all it took for Bob Beamon to leap into history. That's all it took for the slender 22-year-old long jumper to speed 19 strides down the runway, ascend to a height of six feet, stay up in the air like a bird and finally land an incomprehensible 29 feet, 2½ inches later. Of all Olympic records, none is as impressive as the one Beamon stunningly set Oct. 18, 1968 in Mexico City. Bob Beamon got plenty of air under him on his amazing leap of 29-2½ at the Mexico City Games in 1968. Beamon didn't just set a record; he shattered one. He had leaped where no one had gone before. Not only did he become the first 29-foot long jumper that evening; he became the first to pass 28 feet, too. Records are supposed to be broken by inches, not by demolition. Not Beamon. He snapped the existing mark by almost two feet.

He had jumped one foot, 10½ inches farther than his previous best. Soviet jumper Igor Ter-Ovanesyan said, "Compared to this jump, we are as children." English jumper Lynn Davies, the defending Olympic champion, told Beamon, "You have destroyed this event." Before Beamon's leap, the farthest long jump had been 27 feet, 4¾ inches, by Ter-Ovanesyan and Ralph Boston. Jesse Owens had set a record of 26-8¼ in 1935 that had held up for 25 years. But from 1960 to 1967, the record was broken or tied eight times by Boston or Ter-Ovanesyan -- yet it had climbed just 8½ inches. In one jump, Beamon stretched the record by an incredible one foot, 9¾ inches. It was a record Beamon would keep for almost 23 years, until Mike Powell hit 29-4½ on Aug. 30, 1991 at Tokyo. Beamon was born Aug. 29, 1946 in Jamaica, N.Y.

When he was an infant, his mother died from tuberculosis. Her death left a void he found difficult replacing. He says his craving for attention to replace a lost mother's love first made him a troublemaker and clown in school. Then he turned to sports. "My high school (in Jamaica) was a jungle," he said. "You had to be constantly alert -- ready to fight or run. If you joined one of the gangs, you might escape harm but you also might be in trouble the rest of your life. If you stayed decent, you stood a good chance of being clobbered every day. So I went hot and heavy for basketball -- and I feel it saved me from being cut up. Basketball is big stuff in New York. If you're good in it, everybody respects you. Nobody would want to ruin your shooting eye or your shooting arm." Beamon was even better in track, and his prep coach convinced him to stick with it. Beamon went to North Carolina A&T to be near his ailing grandmother. He wasn't thrilled by life there, and after his grandmother died he transferred to Texas-El Paso, a growing track power.

He worked on his speed and perfecting a technique in which the jumper does not so much jump as walk in the air. ZONE POLL At Long Last At Long Last Afternoon of a Fawn 79 By Roy Blount If it weren't for Jessie Betts's skating dress, the author wouldn't have had this close encounter of the deer kind Books At Long Last For Mike Powell, the man who broke Bob Beamon's long jump record, becoming a sudden hero required years of perseverance Original Layout He would sit all alone in his living room, often for hours at a time, waiting until the daylight had drained out of the walls and the room was cool and dark. That way he could see the dream better, as if it were a movie whose image fades in the light. When the hairs finally began to stand up on the back of his neck, Mike Powell would walk slowly to the back of the house, turn, then wait until he could sec it squarely in front of him again. This is an article from the Sept. 16, 1991 issue Original Layout He would come bounding out of the TV room, turn left after he passed through the foyer, then make another sharp left as he entered the living room.

"By the time I got to the dining room I would jump, and I would visualize myself breaking the world record," Powell says. Of course, this became more complicated after he bought a dining table a few months ago. Sometimes he would break the world record; sometimes he would break the world record and a salad plate. The record was Bob Beamon's long jump mark of 29'2½", set during the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, and for nearly a quarter of a century shrouded in the thin air and heavy breathing of incense and mythology. To break such a record would require from a man a perfect leap of faith. "Sometimes I would just be sitting there on the couch, and all of a sudden here came Mike," says Karen Koellner, Powell's girlfriend of three years. "He would come running through the living room, take off, then the minute he landed he'd throw his hands in the air and start jumping up and down. He always broke the record. Every time." Powell never deprived himself of the elation the moment would bring. "I could actually feel it, feel the rush in my head," he says.

"I've imagined that moment in my living room a hundred times." Powell's moment finally arrived three weeks ago at the World Track and Field Championships in Tokyo, where in a single instant he raised the world record in the long jump to 29'4½" and raised his unlikely dream—Powell's previous best jump in competition was a wind-aided 28'7¾"—to a full-blooded reality. "I've been dreaming about this for two years, and when I'd tell people, they would laugh in my face," says Powell. "Nobody gave me credit. So not to say 'In your face,' but...In your face." Powell also did some jumping in his Tokyo hotel room, leaping past potted plants and lacquered furniture to so many world records that the people in the room below his no doubt had a vision of Powell, too—in hell with his back broken. It had been two years since Powell first realized that the record was within his reach. One of the judges at a meet he had competed at in Houston walked over to where he was sitting after a particularly long foul and told Powell his jump had measured 29'2½".

Powell's problems gauging his approach to the takeoff board became so well known that the other jumpers called him Mike Foul. Sometimes he would land only one or two legal jumps in his six attempts. "Mike is an emotional jumper," says Randy Huntington, Powell's coach. "His technique often depends on the height of his emotions." His unchecked adrenaline rushes finally became so troubling that last year Powell consulted a psychologist, who worked with him on containing his emotions during competition. He is still not the perfect master of his feelings, as he proved in Tokyo when he hyperventilated so badly before his first jump in the final round that he went only 25'9¼", nearly three feet short of Carl Lewis's first jump. "I was so hyped up to beat Carl, I couldn't even breathe," Powell says. Lewis had not lost a long jump competition in 10 years, but Powell, who was 0 for 15 against him, had drawn to within half an inch of his more famous rival at the TAC championships in New York City three months ago. "That was the clincher," Powell says.

"After that I told a lot of people I was going to get him the next time we met." That meeting should have happened in August in Sestierre, Italy, but Lewis withdrew, complaining of a bad back when the weather suddenly turned cold and damp. "He ran from me in Sestierre," Powell says. "If you're going to be a champion, you have to be a champion under all conditions, not just when everything's going your way." Powell says that two of his fouls in Italy were measured at more than 29 feet, and by the time he left Europe and headed for Tokyo, his low personal regard for Lewis had turned into an indignation he scarcely bothered to suppress. In Tokyo, Lewis suggested that the feeling was mutual with his customary mix of brilliance and hauteur, both by jumping 29 feet or farther three times and by glaring at Powell as the latter prepared to jump. "It was almost like he was proclaiming he was the king," Powell says. "Carl's been at the top for so long, I think this was the first time somebody had challenged him, not only in the pit, but in the little mental games that we play with each other.

I Lake it as a challenge if somebody's going to put something like that in my face." Lewis unleashed a wind-aided jump of 29'2¾" in the fourth round—exceeding Beamon's mark by a quarter of an inch, though it would not qualify as a world record—then bounded out of the pit, his face twisted in a knot of rage as he thrust his arms in the air. Powell still can't watch the tape of this outburst without leaping to his feet and bouncing around his den like a pinball. In Tokyo, Powell responded with the world record on his next jump, wearing, as always, both his heart and his adrenal gland on his sleeve. "I felt the way you do when you're about to get into a fight," he says. "That's how mad I was." Powell has made a career of being overlooked, underestimated and disrespected. "All my life I've had people tell me I couldn't do certain things," he says. "They said Carl would probably break the record, and I took it as a personal insult. People would tell me right to my face I couldn't do it, without knowing anything about me.

And basically it pissed me off." Even after he had shattered Beamon's epochal record and Lewis's decade-long winning streak, Powell was stung by Lewis's graceless remarks during a press conference at which he dismissed the enormity of Powell's feat by pointing out, "I had the greatest series of all time. He had just one jump. He may never do it again...." Powell likens his relationship with Lewis to two boxers sparring. "I can give Carl his due," he says, bouncing on his toes and flicking a left jab into the air, "because he is great." Powell throws a left-right combination. "And I can also say what I really think about him," he says, launching an uppercut, "but Carl doesn't want to give anybody else any credit." Powell shouldn't have any trouble getting credit now that he suddenly has the prospect of making plenty of cash. The night of his jump he was up until 3 a.m. fielding questions from the media and doing live satellite hookups with his mother and sister back home in California for the benefit of TV; then he was awakened at 4 a.m. by a call from a radio station in Mexico City, again at 5 a.m.

by a Denver station and at 7 a.m. by one of the network affiliates in Los Angeles that wanted him on a talk show the next night. When he got back to his home in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., there were 45 messages on his answering machine, many from a swarm of sponsors and agents who suddenly wanted to buy a piece of posterity. His first night home, Sunday, Sept. 1, was actually spent in a Beverly Hills hotel so that he could be up by 4 a.m. Monday for a live appearance with Beamon on CBS This Morning. The phone rarely stopped ringing with offers, and by the time Powell showed up at UCLA's Drake Stadium for a Tuesday afternoon press conference with about 25 members of the L.A. media, he had gotten no more than three consecutive hours of sleep since the jump. While holding court in the long jump pit so that a sponsor's logo could be prominently displayed behind him, Powell turned to friends several times and said, "I think I'm going to pass out." By Wednesday the barrage of phone calls had become so relentless that Powell was already questioning how hard he should try to cash in on his new celebrity.

"I want my life back," he told one friend who called. He has already raised his appearance fee from $10,000 to about $50,000 per meet, and last week he got a quick education in how to place a value on his record. "Realistically, it should mean millions," says Powell, who made $200,000 last year, almost none of it from the sorts of endorsements that have made Lewis a wealthy man. "The opportunities are there now for me to make a lot of money, but I want to slow things down. I don't have to be Bo Jackson. I only need so much money to get by on." Someday Powell hopes to become a schoolteacher, at which time his dreams of penury will no doubt come true. In the meantime he may have to settle for modest riches. That would be in sharp contrast to the life he has led for five years on the track and field circuit, particularly in Europe, where some promoters simply didn't bother to hold a long jump competition if Lewis didn't show up at the meet. In 1985 Powell got stiffed by a European promoter who decided he hadn't jumped well enough.

"I was really happy to be getting the $800 I had been promised, but when I didn't jump 25 feet, he wouldn't pay me," Powell recalls. "That was life at the bottom of the barrel. At one time I had to beg to get into meets, and now they have to open the safe door to get me there. It's kind of weird, but a good weird." This season Powell is jumping at a meet organized by that same promoter. "I'm going to put a serious dent in his budget this time," he says. The money was never as important to Powell as the lack of respect he felt he encountered at almost every stop on the circuit, particularly when compared with the treatment given the Santa Monica Track Club—of which Lewis is the star member. "We would go to meets and be treated like second-class citizens compared to the Santa Monica group," Huntington says. "They always set themselves apart, and they were treated like movie stars by the meet organizers." Powell was contemptuous of the Santa Monica club's elitism, and yet it both infuriated and depressed him that the club had never invited him to be a member.

As Powell says, "Santa Monica is made up almost entirely of the good people from the University of Houston and the good people from UCLA. And I was a good person from UCLA. But I guess I'm not good enough to be with them, because they obviously didn't want me in their club." To be fair, UCLA hadn't really wanted Powell, either. Powell graduated from Edgewood High in suburban Los Angeles, where his family moved from Philadelphia when he was 11. He played point guard on the Edgewood basketball team and delighted in dunking over opposing centers. "I was 6'1", 150 pounds and springs," he says. He high-jumped seven feet in high school and was one of the top triple and long jumpers in the state. But few colleges recruited him. "Even people I had beaten were getting better scholarship offers than I was," Powell says. "I couldn't understand it. I had a 3.2 grade point average, scored over 1,000 on my SATs and made academic All-America.

Maybe they thought the skinny kid just got lucky." He went to UC Irvine to play basketball and compete in track and field, but had to give up basketball when he found it overlapped too much with the track season. After long jumping 26'5¼" his sophomore year, Powell began to devote all his attention to that event, and by his senior year he had proved himself sufficiently that he was able to transfer to UCLA. He won the silver medal at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, although only—as The New York Times hastened to point out—because it was not possible for Lewis, who had the three longest jumps of the games, to be awarded all three medals. "Carl always being out there gave him something he could reach for—a line in the sand," Huntington says. Beamon's record was another matter. Lewis had dominated the event for so long that almost no one, including Beamon himself, even considered the possibility that someone other than Lewis would be the first to cross that 23-year-old line in the sand. Beamon knew so little of Powell that during the U.S. Olympic Festival in Los Angeles this summer, he got up to leave just as Powell was about to jump.

"I remember seeing him walking out of the stadium when I was on the runway," Powell said after breaking the record. "I took personal offense at that. I was thinking, Don't walk out when I'm on the runway." Powell finally met Beamon before their CBS This Morning appearance, and the two later sat and talked over breakfast for three hours. "I'd never met the guy before in my life, but we hugged each other hard, and then he started crying and told me he loved me," Powell says. "The feeling was indescribable. I think if I hadn't been so numb from lack of sleep, I would have started crying, too." And he accepted Beamon's explanation of the apparent snub at the Olympic Festival: Beamon simply hadn't followed the sport closely enough to know who Powell was. The two scarcely spoke of the record jump that morning, but Powell felt something more important than words pass between them. "I think he carried around a tremendous burden for 23 years, and that day was like having a weight lifted from his shoulders," Powell says.

"It felt like he was passing the torch on to me." Powell is eager to prove the record-breaking jump was not a fluke, and he would like nothing better than to back it up by winning the gold medal at the Olympics in Barcelona next year. "I've learned how to jump that far now," he says. "When you're running that hard, it's difficult to transfer your speed upward, but I know I have to jump high if I'm going to go far. I've learned how to manipulate my body upward." He has already gone high and far, and now all that remains to be seen is how much higher and farther his dreams can take him. PHOTO The day after he broke the record, Powell shared his joy with well-wishers in Tokyo.

PHOTO 50 stunning Olympic moments No2: Bob Beamon's great leap forward | Rob Bagchi | Sport | The Guardian 50 stunning Olympic moments 50 stunning Olympic moments No2: Bob Beamon's great leap forward As great sporting 'Blimey!' moments go, the shattering of the long-jump world record in 1968 still stands at the pinnacle 50 stunning Olympic moments 50 stunning Olympic moments No2: Bob Beamon's great leap forward As great sporting 'Blimey!' moments go, the shattering of the long-jump world record in 1968 still stands at the pinnacle Wednesday 23 November 2011 05.00 EST First published on Wednesday 23 November 2011 05.00 EST Share on Messenger Close Some sporting feats ridicule expectations, fewer violate logic but the rarest of all added a defying of gravity to a hat-trick of achievements. At 3.45pm on 18 October 1968 in Mexico City’s Estadio Olímpico Universitario Bob Beamon accomplished all three.

As great sporting “Blimey!” moments go, the New Yorker’s shattering of the long-jump world record and the creation of a benchmark then thought impossible still stands at the pinnacle. Why Olympians shine under the spotlight Read more The 1968 Olympic Games began 10 days after the Mexican army had massacred protestors in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City. Calls for the Games to be postponed fell on deaf ears at the International Olympic Committee and the organising body released a pompously self-absorbed statement to justify going ahead while bodies still lay in the morgues. “None of the demonstrations or violence has at any times been directed against the Olympic Games,” it read. “We have been assured that nothing will interfere with the peaceful entrance of the Olympic flame into the stadium.

As guests of Mexico we have full confidence that the Mexican people, universally known for their sportsmanship and great hospitality, will join participants and spectators in celebrating the Games, a veritable oasis in a troubled world.” Their attempts to keep politics out of sport in a year that had seen the brutal suppression of the Prague Spring, a general strike and student uprisings in Paris, demonstrations against the Vietnam war and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, were given a rude awakening by events the day before the long-jump final. At the medal ceremony for the 200m final the black Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the Black Power salute and were joined by Peter Norman, the Australian silver medallist who, in a show of solidarity, wore a badge professing support for Smith and Carlos’s Olympic Project for Human Rights. “While he didn’t raise a fist, he did lend a hand,” Smith said. The American sprinters were expelled from the US team and the IOC banned them for life from the Olympic Games. The next day Beamon stood on the podium with his black socks pulled up high to pledge his support for Smith and Carlos. How he got there beggared belief.

In his autobiography, The Man who Could Fly, Beamon paints a picture of his childhood so bleak that it rivals Oliver Twist’s. His elder brother Andrew was brain-damaged at birth by the kicking his mother received from his father when she was pregnant and Bob was repeatedly beaten himself, following the death of his mother, before his first birthday. Later he became a member of a street gang in Queens and witnessed a friend being stabbed to death. He took up athletics while at reform school and entered the Junior Olympics in New York in 1962 when he was 15. He leapt 7.34 metres (24ft 1in) to win the long jump. “That gold medal was as important to me as the one in Mexico City,” he wrote. “It proved to me that I might come through with something worthwhile in my life.” He arrived at the Olympics having enjoyed an extraordinary season, winning 22 of 23 meets and setting a world’s best of 8.39 metres (27ft 6½in) that was ineligible for the record books because of excessive wind assistance. Beamon was the favourite but he knew three other jumpers were determined to exploit their greater Olympic experience on finals day.

The field included the two previous gold-medal winners, Beamon’s mentor and compatriot Ralph Boston, who had become the champion eight years previously in Rome, and Wales’s Lynn “the Leap” Davies who won in Tokyo in 1964, a victory the Guardian’s John Rodda called “the most remarkable achievement in British Olympics athletics history”. The third danger man was the USSR’s Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, twice a bronze medal winner and the joint holder with Boston of the world record which stood at 8.35 metres (27ft 4¾in). The record had advanced by only 22 centimetres (8½in) over the past 33 years since Jesse Owens had registered an “astonishing” best in 1935, but there was some anticipation before the Games began that Beamon’s explosive pace on the runway made him the sole man with the talent to go beyond the “magical” 28ft mark. Davies’s coach, Ron Pickering, who combined his role with his stellar broadcasting career, assessed Beamon’s potential with awe and some caution: “Beamon is ridiculous.

If Lynn jumps as well as he can he will do perhaps 27½ft. But Beamon is capable of 28ft. I’m afraid Lynn just isn’t capable of that. Just the same I think he can win the gold because he’s the best competitor. None of them raises the game when it matters the way this boy can.” The Welshman himself was similarly wary of Beamon’s skill. “If Beamon hits the take-off board right we can all forget it,” he said. “He’s got far more natural ability than any of us. Ralph said to me: ‘Don’t get him angry, Lynn, or he will jump clean out of the pit.’ But there’s a lot more to it than natural ability. He’s up against a lot of experience and a lot of class and he could easily screw himself.” He almost screwed himself out of the final, overstepping by a foot on his first two attempts in the qualifying competition. With only one chance left, Beamon heeded the advice of Boston and re-measured his run-up from a spot significantly in front of the board and, to his great relief, managed to jump fairly and long enough to make it through.

The night before the final, Beamon told the Guardian’s Simon Burnton in 2007, “I was all nerves. I went out and had a few shots of tequila – a little something to settle myself in.” His discretion meant that he didn’t mention he also had sex with his girlfriend, Gloria, as he noted in his autobiography. “I had committed the cardinal sin in sports,” he wrote. The next day he cast his guilt aside. “’Let’s get down,’ I was thinking. ‘I’m here for one purpose and one purpose only.’” Drawn to jump fourth, he looked up to see each of the first three men foul. Taking his place at the end of the runway, he paused for 20 seconds, breathing deeply, and shook his arms and legs loose. At that altitude and with the tailwind just at its legal limit, conditions were made for miracles. “I felt alone,” he said. “I could not feel my legs under me I was floating.” At last he set off, tearing down the track in the manner of a man who had set a time of 9.5secs for the 100 yards.

He hit the board perfectly, soared, pumped his arms skyward to prolong his forward momentum, and planted his feet six seconds after taking his first stride. His backside momentarily hit the sand and he “continued to jump like a kangaroo hopping out of the sandpit”. He thought he had maybe set a new record of 27ft 10in and cursed himself for grounding his bottom and shaving at least a foot off his mark. Davies and Boston thought that he had hit 28ft but no one knew for certain because the rail the optical measuring device introduced for the Mexico Games slid along was too short for the purpose. Finally the official sent for a tape measure and more than 20 minutes after he had jumped, 8.90m (29 ft 2 ⅜ in) flashed up on the electronic scoreboard. Unfamiliar with the intricacies of metric conversion, Beamon asked: “What does it mean?” It was Boston who told him that it was 55cm (1ft 6¾in) longer than Boston’s best.

Emotion hit Beamon like a bolt and he fell to the floor, losing control of his muscles and suffering, what the physiologist Professor Ernst Jokl diagnosed as a cataplectic seizure. The effect on Ter-Ovanesyan and Davies was just as devastating. “Compared to this, we are children,” said the Muscovite. The defending champion was equally demoralised. “What’s the point?” he said. “He’s destroyed the event.” Forty-three years later it remains the Olympic record and Beamon’s achievement is cherished in the memories of those who witnessed it as “the leap of the century”. Perhaps only Neil Armstrong could quibble with that judgment. What the Guardian said: 19 October 1968 Bob Beamon, a member of the American team, took the greatest single leap forward in world record progression in the long jump at the Olympic Games this morning. He opened his competition with a leap of 29ft 2½in, which is 1ft 6¾in more than the world record.

From a refugee camp to Rio Read more There were long moments while the leap was measured; Adrien Paulen, one of the red-jacketed jury of appeal members, fussed about and finally an official told him the figures – 8m, 90cm. The first indication that the crowd got of some momentous event was when Beamon danced around the track, finally coming to rest on his haunches, dropping his head to the ground and enclosing his arms about his forehead, completely overcome with emotion . What happened next Following the 1968 Olympics, Beamon did not manage to land a jump within two feet of his record and the winning leap came as a shock to him. His phenomenal record, admittedly aided by Mexico City’s altitude and a tailwind, stood for 23 years until 1991 when it was broken twice in the same competition. Only one of these jumps was legal though – Carl Lewis’ attempt of 8.91m was chalked off due to a +2.9 wind. Mike Powell’s huge leap of 8.95m (29 ft 4⅜ in) did stand though and he remains the world record holder 20 years on.

What Beamon said “It was an incredible surprise. As a matter of fact we never thought the record would pass 27ft 10 or 8.4m but I like surprises.” What Mike Powell said “I’d never met the guy before in my life, but we hugged each other hard, and then he started crying and told me he loved me” – on meeting Beamon having broken his 23-year-old world record. Featured Articles about Bob Beamon - Page 2 - latimes FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT BOB BEAMON - PAGE 2 SPORTS Names in the News January 17, 1992 | From Staff and Wire Reports Long jumper Mike Powell, who broke Bob Beamon's 23-year-old world record by two inches with a 29 foot 4 1/2 leap at the World Championships in August, was named winner of the 1992 Jesse Owens International Trophy Award in New York. Advertisement Al Franken, Los Angeles track and field promoter, is...

June 29, 1989 Al Franken, Los Angeles track and field promoter, is offering $500,000--over a 20-year period--to any long jumper who breaks Bob Beamon's world record of 29 feet 2 1/2 inches at the Jack in the Box Invitational at UCLA's Drake Stadium Aug. 6. If the record is broken before the meet, the money will not be awarded. SPORTS Long-Lasting Track & Field Records September 3, 1998 * 1. Jesse Owens' long jump record lasted 25 years. * 2. Bob Beamon's long jump record, 23 years. * 3. Lee Evans' 400-meter record, 20 years. * 4. Sebastian Coe's 800-meter record 18 years. * 5. Edwin Moses' 400-meter hurdles record, 15 years. * 6. Derek Clayton's men's marathon record, 12 years. * 7. Ingrid Kristiansen's women's marathon record, 13 years.

Source: World Features Syndicate SPORTS Carl Lewis Goes 27-9 1/2 in First Jump of Year May 22, 1988 | Associated Press Carl Lewis leaped 27 feet 9 1/2 inches to win the long jump in the Houston Invitational track and field meet Saturday. Lewis, jumping for the first time this year, was 17 inches off Bob Beamon's world record. "I really didn't feel that great today, competitive-wise," Lewis said. "But I was able to work out some things that (will) help the rest of the season." SPORTS Beamon's greatness endures for decades August 20, 2008 | Gary Hall Jr.; Helene Elliott BEIJING -- The U.S. Olympic Committee has a hospitality suite called the USA House here, where Olympians and their friends and family can meet, along with those associated with the Olympic movement. It was at the USA House that I attended an event to honor Olympic legend Bob Beamon.

The event was to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Bob's historic 1968 long jump of 29 feet, 2 1/2 inches, still an Olympic record. I've gotten to know Bob pretty well over the last few years. What a great man. We both spend time in South Florida. SPORTS Summer Games Spotlight : Barcelona '92 Olympics / Day 14 : A Memorable Day August 8, 1992 | RANDY HARVEY, The Times Not since 1968 has the United States had as memorable a day in Olympic track and field as it did Thursday, when Americans won nine medals, including four golds. On Oct. 18, 1968, at Mexico City, Bob Beamon won the long jump with the first 29-foot leap, Lee Evans broke the world record in the 400 meters and Bill Toomey began the decathlon competition, which he eventually won. But in terms of medals won, Thursday was the best.

SPORTS Track and Field August 1, 1991 | From Staff and Wire Reports Rain, wind and temperatures in the 50s ruined the chances of Americans hoping to set world records in a track meet at Sestriere, Italy, an Alpine resort nearly 6,600 feet above sea level. Carl Lewis, who had hoped to beat Bob Beamon's longstanding record of 29 feet 2 1/2 inches, pulled out of the long jump, blaming back pains. Lewis also expressed concern over competing on a wet track in the cool air, especially with the world championships later this month in Tokyo. Memorable Olympic Moments: Bob Beamon Encyclopedia: Track & Field Some sports moments simply defy all reasonable comprehension—Mickey Mantle blasting a 565-foot home run, Secretariat winning the 1973 Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths, and Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open by 15 strokes. But the feat that may top them all came on Oct. 18, 1968, at the Olympic Games in Mexico City. Between 1935 and 1968, the world long jump record increased exactly eight and one-half inches.

Coming into the Olympics, the world record was 27 feet, 4¾ inches, shared by American Ralph Boston and Soviet Igor Ter-Ovanesyan. In six seconds, that all changed. Bob Beamon, a 22-year-old New York native, barely qualified for the Olympic long jump finals after fouling in two of his qualifying runs. Fortunately, he did. The following day in the finals, Beamon took off down the runway in the thin air of Mexico City. After exactly 19 loping strides, he hit the board perfectly, stretched out with his legs and flew through the air like no one ever had. And finally, he hit the sand in the pit below—29 feet, 2½ inches later! He leapt out of the pit, knowing he had done something special. Not only was he the first long jumper in history to reach 28 feet. He also became the first to reach 29 feet. He shattered the world record by an unbelievable 21 ¾ inches.

When the distance was given by stadium announcers, Beamon was so excited and emotionally drained that doctors claim he suffered a "cataplectic seizure." "Compared to this jump, we are as children," Ter-Ovanesyan said. Some critics devalued the jump, claiming the rarified air and the wind of 2.0 meters per second was more responsible for the record. But all the other competitors jumped in the same elements and strangely, none of them came close. The record lasted almost 23 years until Aug. 30, 1991 when American Mike Powell jumped 29-4½ at the World Championships in Tokyo. More from 2008 Summer Olympics Did you know? The Story Behind Bob Beamon's Miracle Jump And The Only Photo That Mattered The Story Behind Bob Beamon's Miracle Jump And The Only Photo That Mattered Go to permalink The man who took one of the most famous photos in Olympic history wasn’t a professional photographer.

Tony Duffy was on vacation at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, and with nothing more than an amateur’s bravado, he casually wandered into the Athletes’ Village—which should have been off limits to him—and first heard the name of the man who’d make his career. Advertisement Earlier this month, at his home in Encinitas, Calif., Duffy recalled hanging poolside with British long jumper Mary Rand inside the Athletes’ Village. As they talked, Lynn Davies and Ralph Boston approached Rand and began handicapping the men’s long jump competition. Duffy knew that their comments were worth listening to. Davies, a Welshman, was the defending Olympic champ in the event. Boston was the 1960 gold medalist and the 1964 silver medalist; he’d been the man who surpassed Jesse Owens’s long-jump mark that stood for 25 years.

Boston was still the current co-holder of the world record, along with his rival from the Soviet Union, Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, at 27’4¾.” Advertisement The subject came around to Bob Beamon, Boston’s precocious American teammate, “a slash of a man, 6’3”, 160 pounds,” according to Sports Illustrated. Boston knew that Davies liked to play psychological games with his opponents, and he had some advice for Davies about the long-limbed, long-necked 22-year-old Beamon: “Don’t get him riled up because he’s liable to jump out of the fucking pit.” Duffy immediately filed away that tidbit. “Wow, this Beamon must be worth watching,” he thought to himself. Tony Duffy was born in London just before World War II. He spent most of his youth there, except for when he and many other children were transported to the countryside for safety as Germans bombed the city. He went on to study law at the University of Manchester before becoming an accountant. He joined a large international firm and worked in the taxation department. He wanted a lot more.

Sponsored Living in London during the Go-Go ‘60s, Duffy grew to hate the “staid, stilted, conservative accountancy environment where you’re expected to be sober and careful and prudent and all that stuff,” he told me in a broad accent that Mike Myers might have studied for Austin Powers. “It was totally the opposite of what my personality was.” He turned to photography as a hobby. He bought an old Voigtländer camera “mainly for holidays. I was never really into photography as a medium. It was a method of taking pictures of my trips and various girlfriends I had. That was about it.” Advertisement Advertisement Patricia Nutting, an 80-meter hurdler who was talented enough to represent Great Britain in three Olympics, was one of those girlfriends. “She’d say, ‘Look, I’m competing on Saturday. Why don’t you come along?’” Duffy remembered. “I started taking pictures of her in action out of something to do, rather than just sit and watch.” His photos turned out quite well, especially the action shots, and Nutting encouraged him to send them to a local track-and-field magazine.

When they used one, sent him a small check, and published his name on the credit, he was encouraged. “Damn, this can’t be bad,” he said. “That’s what gave me the first inkling of an alternative route.” He traveled to local meets to shoot pictures, even after he and Nutting split up. He upgraded his camera to a Nikkormat, the consumer version of a Nikon, not the sort of equipment a professional would use. He had to manually advance the film each and every time he took a picture. Advertisement But he now had the bug even if he couldn’t be bothered to take a photography class. In the fall of 1968, Duffy decided to combine his love of sport with his fledgling hobby and attend the Olympics in Mexico City. He saved money and signed up for a package tour organized by a Welsh outfit. He purchased a 300 mm f/4.5 lens for the occasion. Duffy discovered athletic nirvana in Mexico, even if the Tommie Smith-John Carlos protest has come to overshadow the dramatic performances that were occurring daily inside Estadio Olimpico Universitario.

Kip Keino’s victory in the 1,500 meters marked another milestone in Africa’s dominance of distance running, Dick Fosbury unveiled a revolutionary approach to the high jump, and Jim Hines clocked a 9.95 in the 100. Operating without media credentials, Duffy found that in the relatively carefree days before the terrorist attack at the Munich Games, Mexico City was an unsupervised playground. Nutting lent Duffy her tracksuit top, and he sneaked into the Athletes’ Village with little problem, waving his camera at the guards as he walked alongside actual competitors. While Beamon’s competitors knew his talent, they had no idea how much he’d overcome to get to Mexico City. Beamon’s mother died before he was one, and he never knew his biological father. He was raised by his step-father’s mother in Jamaica, Queens, where he joined a gang and dealt drugs as a teen before being sentenced to one of the dreaded “600” reform schools in New York, operated by the Bureau for the Education of Socially Maladjusted Children. Advertisement Advertisement Beamon rescued himself when youth coaches helped him realize his nascent athletic talent.

By 1964, he ranked among the top high-school jumpers in the nation (up there with Bobby Bonds, father of Barry). Beamon and fellow New Yorker John Carlos met and competed for the Pioneer track club before Beamon went off to college in Texas. Just before the 1968 Olympics, while he was still a student at UTEP, Beamon was suspended for boycotting a meet against BYU in protest over what he considered to be racist policies of the Mormon Church. Unlike Ralph Boston, an elder statesman who was technically skilled, Beamon was not a scientific jumper. But he had sprinter’s speed, which Carlos helped him harness and hone, and he caught fire in the months preceding the Olympics. He registered 20 victories in 21 meets in 1968, and uncorked a personal best of 27’6½” at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

(It didn’t count as a world record because it was wind-aided.) With Beamon joining Boston, Davies, and Ter-Ovanesyan in Mexico City, legendary sportswriter Dick Schaap billed the competition “as a battle among four of the half-dozen greatest long jumpers in history.” On the morning of October 17, one day after Carlos and Smith raised their black-gloved fists from the podium after running the 200 meters, the long jumpers gathered for the first round of the competition. They each had three jumps to surpass the qualifying distance of 25’3” to reach the finals. Boston, Davies, and Ter-Ovanesyan did so, as did Charles Mays, the third American in the field. Beamon fouled badly on his first two jumps. Advertisement Boston played the role of mentor and advised Beamon to take off well short of the board to ensure a clean if unspectacular jump. Beamon did so, leaping 26’10” on his last attempt to qualify. That night, Beamon admitted, he relaxed with some tequila and committed the “cardinal sin” of having sex with his girlfriend.

“All I could think of were words that started with ‘D’–deplete, drain, dissipate, distract, da da da dum!,” he noted in his memoir, The Man Who Could Fly . “‘You have just left your gold medal on the sheets,’ I told myself.” Advertisement He and the other 16 finalists reconvened the next afternoon, October 18. That day, Duffy had tickets in the nosebleed section along with the other members of his tour. The long jump was the first event on the afternoon program and as the athletes began their warm-up routines, Duffy noticed that the stadium was slow to fill. Vast number of seats were unoccupied, perhaps because of darkened skies that threatened squalls. Seeing that there were plenty of empty seats next to the track, Duffy thought to himself, “You know what? I bet I can get in there.” With the Nikkormat dangling from his neck, Duffy began to hustle his way closer to the action. He waved and blustered past the Mexican students who were serving as security guards. Advertisement “The students were there to have a good time,” Duffy said.

“I bullshitted and blarneyed my way through by smiling a lot and patting them on the back and fiddling around with credentials I didn’t have. I just kept on walking until I made it to the front row of the seating.” With the runway for the long jump placed outside of the track oval, Duffy was perfectly positioned to get a head-on shot of the jumpers as they leaped toward him. And, with most of the media focused on the 400-meter finals that was scheduled to begin immediately after the start of the long jump, he was practically the only photographer stationed by the pit, and he was just 50 feet away. The competition began shortly after 3:30 p.m. The first three men fouled. The fourth jumper was Beamon, the youthful American Duffy had heard so much about. As Beamon readied for his first attempt, Duffy stood and aimed his Nikkormat over the low railing. Advertisement In the thin air of Mexico City (elevation: 7,349 feet), conditions were “synchronistically ripe” for Beamon, according to Duffy. The temperature was 74 degrees. The rain was holding off.

The wind speed on the track measured 2.0 meters per second – the maximum allowable by the rules for setting official records. Beamon stood motionless on the runway, his close-cropped hair parted neatly on the left side of his head. He stared at the pit, rocked briefly to gather himself, and then took off, his impossibly long legs advancing toward the board. His last thought, he said later, was, “Don’t foul.” Advertisement Nineteen strides later, or about 130 feet, he planted his right foot squarely on the board and flew skyward. It appeared that he was running in mid-air. He hovered as high as six feet above the sand, estimated Jesse Owens, who was watching through binoculars. “He took off running, man, and when he hit the board he just kept climbing,” John Carlos told me. Advertisement As gravity took over, Beamon swung his arms backwards and outside his legs for one last thrust. His white Adidas spikes made landing and disappeared in a cloud of brown sand, with his knees and ankles taking the brunt of the jarring impact that folded his body into itself. His butt momentarily brushed the sand. The sequence took all of about six breathtaking seconds.

Beamon hopped forward, using his momentum to propel himself onto the green grass beyond the pit. He glanced back to see if he had fouled, then turned onto the straightaway of the track, shaking out his limbs while jogging past the officials in red blazers who were staring at him in wonderment. He took another peek at the mark, as it to implant the moment forever, before loping toward the starting-point. He was practically dancing by the time he reached Boston and Mays. They greeted him with low-fives before Beamon stepped across the runway and faced down Ter-Ovanesyan and the Soviet contingent, swathed in red jerseys, their jaws agape. Advertisement Advertisement “It looks like a marvelous jump,” was the reaction from the ABC-TV announcer, which might be the grandest understatement in Olympic broadcast annals. Officials had installed an electronic measuring device that ran on a rail alongside the pit. The judges moved the optical sight to the point where Beamon landed — out, farther, out some more – until it fell off the far end of the rail. They hurried off to find a measuring tape. Some 20 minutes passed as the officials checked and double-checked the distance.

Finally, three numbers were posted on the scoreboard: 8.90. Advertisement It was the distance of the jump in meters, and Beamon did not realize what that was in feet and inches. Boston informed him it was beyond 29 feet–and Beamon collapsed onto the track. He had obliterated the world record by almost two feet, soaring past the previous best of 27’4¾”, past 28 feet, to 29’2½”. The record lasted for 23 years. It remains, arguably, the greatest individual feat of the modern Olympics. Advertisement “My mind was set for 27 feet or 27.5 feet,” Beamon later told Ron Reid of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “But 29 feet! Who was jumping on the moon in 1968? I was in the Twilight Zone, between time and space. I didn’t believe I had jumped that far.” No one else could either. Then the rains returned. Advertisement “Compared to that jump, the rest of us are children,” said a shaken Ter-Ovanesyan, who jumped 26’7¾” to finish fourth.

“I can’t go on after that,” said Davies, who managed 26’½” to place ninth. Beamon took one more of the permissible six jumps (26’4½”) before retiring from the competition. East German Klaus Beer became the answer to a trivia question by finishing second (26’10½”), with the veteran Boston regaining his composure to take third (26’9½”). Advertisement Two days after Smith and Carlos startled the world with their demonstration, Beamon raised eyebrows when he accepted the gold medal with his warm-up pants tucked inside a pair of black socks that stretched to his calves. Tony Duffy had snapped exactly one frame of Beamon’s jump. He recalls seeing “the whites of his eyes” as Beamon came toward him. Even after he became aware of what Beamon had done, Duffy carried around the roll of undeveloped film for a couple of days before taking it to get developed. “I had no conception what I’d got on the roll,” he said. Advertisement He brought the film not to a professional processing lab, but to a one-hour place near his hotel that catered to tourists.

Back in his room he unspooled the roll of 36 black-and-white negatives and held them up to the light. He looked for the distinctive USA emblem, then matched the images to the athletes’ bib numbers from the program he’d been given at the stadium. The frame with Ralph Boston was fuzzy. The frame with Bob Beamon, wearing No. 254, was sharp. Advertisement Indeed, while the jump was nearly out of the pit, the photograph of the jump was out of this world. Duffy captured Beamon at his zenith: right arm extended over his right leg, left arm by his waist as if readying to brace for landing. His mouth is formed into an “O” while the scoreboard frames his figure. He appears to be leaping over one background judge and, simultaneously, jumping out of his white shorts (you can glimpse his jockstrap). It was the perfect shot of the perfect jump. After Duffy returned to England, he sent the Beamon photo and others he took at the Olympics to a local magazine called Amateur Photographer.

The Beamon shot was first published in a double-truck spread in the December 4, 1968, issue of the magazine, alongside a picture of British long jumper Maureen Barton, under the headline “Mexican Ballet.” Advertisement The reaction in Europe, where track and field is venerated, was profound: Duffy the amateur had scooped the pros. And, even though other photographers had snapped pictures of the moment, none managed to catch Beamon at peak height and head-on. (Sports Illustrated used a color picture of Beamon on his way up that was taken by veteran photojournalist John Dominis.) Duffy’s photo was so good, and had so little competition, that naysayers insisted the image must have been of Beamon’s second jump. Said Duffy: “When that happened I thought, ‘Well, fuck, how am I going to prove this?’” Advertisement When Duffy compared his picture with images of Beamon’s second jump, he noticed that Beamon had donned his black socks for the latter attempt. That evidence clinched it. “I got the shot, but I had no idea what it meant,” Duffy said.

“It took another six months before the light gradually began to dawn on me that I had got something special.” Advertisement “The Jump” was soon reproduced in magazines and posters around the world. The acclaim that Duffy received gave him confidence he could be a fulltime shooter. He began trolling for work at the myriad publications that lined Fleet Street, all the while learning the craft through trial and error and by asking questions of veteran photographers. He fell in with one experienced hand named John Starr, who had the technical training and acumen that Duffy lacked. They rented out a little studio in the back of a friend’s insurance business. “I’d do shoots indoors and say, ‘John, how do we do this?’ He’d say, ‘Well, you need to strobe it.’ I said, ‘Can you do that?’ He said, ‘Yep.’” For a while Duffy balanced his marriage, his accounting job, and shooting sports, but photography eventually won out. Duffy divorced his wife, and quit accountancy at the end of 1971. By the time of the next Summer Olympics he was a credentialed photojournalist. With Starr’s support, he formed a photo agency called Allsport.

Advertisement Duffy remembers shooting the pole vault in Munich next to an elderly woman. He thought to himself, “Boy, they’re giving out credentials to anybody.” Then he was informed that the woman was Leni Riefenstahl, the infamous Nazi propagandist and mastermind behind the coverage of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. What Duffy remembers most about Munich is the feeling that he and Allsport had arrived. “We had deals with people for coverage and the access was really good,” he said. “We were in business.” Advertisement Duffy and Allsport continued to break ground after Munich. He worked with the Times of London on a photo spread that featured nude athletes. (“Sport and the Body” was, in retrospect, the precursor to ESPN The Magazine’s “Body Issue.”) With journalist Paul Wade, he published a book of photos of female athletes entitled Winning Women: The Changing Image of Women in Sports. He traveled the world shooting the most important sporting events (including those behind the Iron Curtain).

The “accidental” photographer won major awards and produced iconic images: a stunning shot of Austrian synchronized swimmer Alexandra Worisch; a riotous photo of the “Twickenham Streaker,” his privates covered by the fortuitous placement of a London bobby’s helmet; Steve Prefontaine at the 1972 Olympics ; and Bruce Jenner at the 1976 Games . Advertisement Allsport grew into an industry behemoth. The company hired top photographers, like Bob Martin, Simon Bruty, and Mike Powell, whose work rivaled the best that Sports Illustrated produced. They acquired other photo agencies and collections to expand their archives. In 1983, Duffy moved to the United States to start Allsport USA and to cover the Los Angeles Olympics the next year. Duffy and Beamon crossed paths on several occasions, including on the 25th anniversary of “Beamon’s Bombshell,” which also coincided with the 20th anniversary of the founding of Allsport. Each acknowledged the other’s role in helping to create their own legends. But while Duffy used the moment to launch a new career, Beamon struggled at times to escape the specter of his accomplishment. Injuries slowed him after Mexico.

He never again jumped 29 feet or 28 feet or even 27 feet. He was drafted by the Phoenix Suns, but did not play in the NBA. “It’s like, what do you do for an encore?” Duffy said. “There was no way he could better what he did in Mexico City.” Advertisement Beamon graduated from Adelphi College and was the subject of a gem of a book, entitled The Perfect Jump , written by Dick Schaap in 1976. (It featured Duffy’s photo on the cover). Now 69, he lives in Florida and is enshrined in the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. “It was great,” he told Schaap of the jump, “but it was just something I did.” Advertisement Years, then decades passed as challengers, including the great Carl Lewis, fell short of his record. Finally, in 1991 at the world track and field championships in Tokyo, Mike Powell leaped 8.95 meters–29’4½”–to surpass Beamon. Tony Duffy happened to be sitting in the stands that evening.

Duffy noticed that the air in Tokyo felt “remarkably similar” to Mexico City in 1968, “with the intermittent rain holding off and the same atmospheric conditions. I wonder what sort of impact that had.” Advertisement Duffy did not get the shot of Powell breaking Beamon’s record; he had deferred his place on the track to an Allsport colleague, coincidentally named Mike Powell. “I knew he was going to nail the shot, and I knew his chances of getting it were a lot better than mine,” Duffy said. “My eyes were shot in those days.” Duffy worked his last Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, not long after he and Allsport split ways. He received a healthy compensation package from the company he founded, but that figure was dwarfed by the reported $51.1 million “purchase consideration” that Getty Images paid to acquire Allsport and its archives in a transaction that was finalized at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. The deal included the rights to the Beamon photo. For a while Duffy hoped to launch another sports photo agency, but he soon concluded that he was too old to build anew.

He concentrated on shooting female athletes–“my personal Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue,” he joked––before slipping into semi-retirement. He received U.S. citizenship in 2000 and has written most of his memoirs. Advertisement Now 78, he lives in Southern California in an airy condominium on bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. When I asked him if the Beamon photo was the best picture he’d ever taken, he didn’t hesitate. “It was the luckiest one,” he said, “and it was the most important one, but it certainly was not the best because no work went into it. He ran and jumped and I clicked the camera once.” David Davis @ddavisla is the author of Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku (Univ. of Nebraska Press). $22 Articles about Mike Powell - latimes Lewis Inches Onto Team, Powell Goes on Last Leap June 20, 1996 | RANDY HARVEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER With Michael Johnson having sapped the suspense out of the 400-meter final in the U.S.

track and field Olympic trials Wednesday night with history's third-fastest time, the crowd of 16,735 at the Centennial Olympic Stadium had to depend on the long jumpers to provide the dramatics. They did not disappoint. When the competition began, the question on everyone's mind was whether Carl Lewis could make his fifth Olympic team. Advertisement BUSINESS Record Jump Falls Shy of Pay Dirt : * Marketing: World-class income eludes track star Mike Powell, who broke a 23-year-old record in Tokyo championship meet. August 31, 1991 | THOMAS S. MULLIGAN, TIMES STAFF WRITER Long-jumper Mike Powell shattered track and field's most enduring record on Friday. But moving into the elite ranks in sports marketing would be an even greater leap, experts said. Powell, 27, a Alta Loma resident and 1988 Olympic silver medalist, simultaneously erased Bob Beamon's 23-year-old world record and Carl Lewis' 10-year winning streak with a long jump of 29 feet, 4 1/2 inches at the World Championships of track and field in Tokyo.

SPORTS World Mark Vanishes in Thin Air : Track and field: Cuba's Ivan Pedroso surpasses Mike Powell with leap of 29-4 3/4 in Italian Alps. July 30, 1995 | RANDY HARVEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER The world record in the long jump, virtually unchallenged for almost a quarter of a century, was broken for the second time in four years Saturday, when Cuba's Ivan Pedroso jumped 29 feet 4 3/4 inches in the thin, Alpine air of Sestriere, Italy. With the eclipse of the record of 29-4 1/2 set in 1991 by Mike Powell, it is the first time since the former Soviet Union's Igor Ter-Ovanesyan tied Ralph Boston's 27-4 3/4 that a non-American has been on top of the world in the long jump.

SPORTS Names in the News February 6, 1992 | From Staff and Wire Reports UCLA softball pitcher Lisa Fernandez has been named Southern California Female Athlete of the Year by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, and Mike Powell, the world record-holder in the long jump, was honored as the outstanding male athlete. SPORTS Track and Field May 16, 1992 | From Staff and Wire Reports Long jump world record-holder Mike Powell begins his outdoor season today at the S&W Modesto Invitational at Modesto Junior College. Powell set a world record of 29 feet 4 1/2 inches last summer at the World Championships but has competed only three times since. Also in the field are four-time Olympian Larry Myricks and Llewellyn Starks, ranked fourth in the world last season. SPORTS Meet at UC Irvine to Feature Top Track Athletes May 29, 1989 Some of the top track and field athletes in the United States will compete in a track and field meet at UC Irvine at 3 p.m. Sunday.

The men's competition will include Edwin Moses, Kevin Young and Danny Harris in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles, Roger Kingdom and Al Joyner in the 110-meter hurdles and Mike Powell in the long jump. The women's competition will feature Evelyn Ashford (100 meters), Alice Brown (100), Pam Marshall (100 and 200), Shiela Hudson (triple jump), Lacy Barnes (discus) SPORTS Running January 25, 1993 | From Staff and Wire Reports Track officials said world records set by Carl Lewis and Mike Powell at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo were in no danger of being withdrawn, despite claims in the London-based Sunday Times that the Tokyo track where the 100-meter dash and long jump marks were set did not conform to international rules. Lewis was timed in 9.86 seconds in winning the sprint and Powell broke Bob Beamon's 23-year-old long jump mark by leaping 29 feet 4 1/2 inches.

SPORTS Jumping to a Conclusion : Lewis Competing Against Powell Is What Everybody Wants--but Them April 11, 1995 | RANDY HARVEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER For one night in 1991, Carl Lewis and Mike Powell personified the drama and purity of track and field at its best. Before a capacity crowd at the World Championships in Tokyo's Olympic Stadium, the two best long jumpers went at it to see who was better. Lewis, unbeaten in the event for more than a decade, jumped farther than he ever had. Even so, he lost to Powell, who jumped farther than anyone ever had in breaking Bob Beamon's 22-year-old world record. SPORTS Running January 25, 1993 | From Staff and Wire Reports Track officials said world records set by Carl Lewis and Mike Powell at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo were in no danger of being withdrawn, despite claims in the London-based Sunday Times that the Tokyo track where the 100-meter dash and long jump marks were set did not conform to international rules.

Lewis was timed in 9.86 seconds in winning the sprint and Powell broke Bob Beamon's 23-year-old long jump mark by leaping 29 feet 4 1/2 inches. SPORTS Barcelona '92 OLYMPICS / DAY 13 : Lewis Is Again Good as Gold in Long Jump August 7, 1992 | JIM MURRAY Do you have a clue what three centimeters amount to? A little more than the width of your thumbnail. Ten or 20 grains of sand in a row. But for Mike Powell, three centimeters might as well be a mile. The hole he made coming down in the sand at the Olympic high jump pit was three centimeters short of the one Carl Lewis had made two hours earlier. It was a melodramatic evening. Lewis had started the competition with a jump of 28 feet 5 1/2 inches. People thought that was going to be an appetizer.

SPORTS Barcelona '92 OLYMPICS / DAY 13 : 1st Jump Enough for Lewis : Long jump: He leaps 28-5 1/2, and Powell's last effort comes up 1 1/4 inches short. August 7, 1992 | RANDY HARVEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER It was the most anticipated event of the track and field competition in the Summer Olympics, and although it was hardly worth all the words spoken and written about it in advance, it was no less special to Carl Lewis. "It ranks up there with the first one," Lewis said after winning his seventh gold medal since 1984, his third in a row in the long jump. "This was by far the most difficult one for me because of the challenge." SPORTS BARCELONA '92 OLYMPICS / DAY 11 : Minor Ailments for Powell, Johnson : Track and field: Long jumper has back problem, decathlete has sore foot. August 5, 1992 | RANDY HARVEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER Injuries disrupted training for two U.S.

gold-medal favorites, long jumper Mike Powell and decathlete Dave Johnson, as they prepared to begin competition today in the Olympic Games. Of the two, Johnson appears to be less concerned. Powell also is optimistic that he will feel no more than minor discomfort while attempting to prevent Carl Lewis from winning his third consecutive gold medal in the Olympic long jump. SPORTS The Longest Jump August 31, 1991 Bob Beamons' leap of 29 feet 2 1/2 inches at the 1968 Olympics was considered by many a fluke in the thin air of Mexico City. After all, he broke the previous mark by almost two feet. Carl lewis had crept up on it over the years, and Robert Emmiyan of the Soviet Union jumped 29-1 in 1987, but no one could have been prepared for what happened Friday at Tokyo when Mike Powell, on his second-to-last attempt, jumped 29-4 1/2. Track and Field May 16, 1992 | From Staff and Wire Reports Long jump world record-holder Mike Powell begins his outdoor season today at the S&W Modesto Invitational at Modesto Junior College.

Powell set a world record of 29 feet 4 1/2 inches last summer at the World Championships but has competed only three times since. Also in the field are four-time Olympian Larry Myricks and Llewellyn Starks, ranked fourth in the world last season. SPORTS 75 DAYS TO THE BARCELONA GAMES : Jumping Ahead : Powell Isn't Looking Back, but to 30 Feet and Beyond May 11, 1992 | RANDY HARVEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER When he answered the telephone call that brought a request for yet another interview, Mike Powell had a question of his own. "How long will it take?" One hour, he was told. That was fine, he said. He had one hour. A few days later, at the appointed time, Powell answered the door at his Alta Loma home, greeted the visitor and said, "How long did you say this will take?" One hour, he again was told.

world record long jump beamon world record catfish kerr How long did Bob Beamons world record long jump stand for - trivia question / questions answer / answers Jul 19, 2012 Great Olympic Moments: Bob Beamon smashes the long jump record leap would add 55cm (21 3/4ins)  or 6 6 per cent  to. the world record Bob Beamon breaks the world record in the long jump by nearly two feet during the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games Sep 13, 2012 USA's Bob Beamon breaks the world record in the long jump by. nearly two feet during the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games Watch more Sep 9, 1991 Mike Powell broke Bob Beamon's storied long jump record in 1968 when Bob Beamon set the greatest track. and field world record of all time, Aug 13, 2013 The running long jump, or commonly known as just the long jump, is a popular track and field event.

Bob Beamon world record long jump at the Aug 4, 2012 Beamon won the event with a world-record-breaking long jump of 8. 9 meters. Photo: AFP/Getty. Images Even now, there are those who claim

Question: Who eventually broke Bob Beamon's 23 year-old long jump record, in 1991?
Answer: MIKE POWELL