Bob Beamon’s long jump at the Olympic Games of Mexico City is considered as one of the most important events of the history of sport. 50 years ago, he lands at 8,90 meters, a record for 23 years – and the eternity.
The conditions were perfect on that October day in Mexico city. Sunny, dry, with a slight tail wind blew through the Olympic stadium. And most of them were athletes quite fond of the new tartan track. No Slipping when starting on the loose ash, shorter spines on the shoes, not drilled so deep into the wood beams at the Bounce of the track and field facility. The thin mountain air. 2240 meters above the sea. While the endurance athletes after air japsten, was the low partial pressure of oxygen for just six seconds for the 19 steps start-up to landing in the sand pit is not a Problem. Instead, the low air would have a resistance a positive effect on the walking tempo.
But what is the use of optimal external circumstances without the optimal athletes with an optimal day? The American Bob Beamon had his at 18. In October 1968 in the Olympic final exactly at 15:40 local time, in the very first attempt. A powerful yet elegant start-up, fast, strong, Bounce, kick him in the head height of the bystanders judge, a little staksige landing on the legs. “I landed on the wheel of the pit and was disappointed in the first Moment, because my buttocks grazed the Sand,” recalled Beamon years later. “It wasn’t a perfect jump.”
Jump into another Dimension
The 65,000 spectators in the stadium saw it differently: It is an incredulous murmur through the crowd, had to wait 20 minutes until the Distance was shown on the scoreboard went. “Because of the break first,” said the former silver medal winner for the GDR, the Berlin Klaus Beer, most recently, the “world on Sunday”. No wonder – the electronic measuring system was only designed for up to 8.60 m, the judges first had to dig a steel tape measure and manually remeasure. Came out 8,90 meters. Bob Beamon had broken the world record by 55 centimeters.
Beamon, then 22 years old, was still not at all clear what he’s done: “First, as to me, Ralph Boston [The team-mate stopped to 8.35 metres world record – Anm. d. Red] said I’m about 29 feet jumped, collapsed, I,” the native New Yorker five decades later, the “world on Sunday”. “I didn’t want to have come true, to dream is thought to be in an unreal world.” But the electronic scoreboard left no doubt: “254” for the start number and “8,90” for the Wide stood there. For the prestigious U.S. magazine “Sports Illustrated” was one of the five greatest sports moments of the 20th century. Century.
The burden of record
“It was a tremendous experience,” said competitor Klaus Beer, the only 8.19 metres were also worthy of all honor. But the spotlight he had to leave the US-American jumped after the announcement of his Wide-open wild in the stadium-Inside around. Jesse Owens, in 1936, at the thought of the summer games in Berlin a worthy four-time Olympic gold medalist and long jump world record holder with 8,13 meters from 1935 to 1960, coined fast the concept of the “leap into the next century”.
Bob Beamon in the fall of 2012 in Barcelona
On the best lists that proved to be accurate, not quite: At the world Championships in 1991 in Tokyo Beamon’s compatriot, Mike Powell further jumped another five centimeters. Maybe a kind of redemption, because already two years after his record Beamon, the orphan boy with Schneider training described, the load that now lay on his shoulders: “It is, so if I get no more air. The record is killing me.” Owens had said in 1968: “It’s part of the great moral power of resistance, to bear such a record. People want to increase.”
Three digits range
Beamon took me a long time to come up with its popularity and the pressure. After his resignation, he was professional Basketball, first in the NBA Team the Phoenix Suns, then for the Harlem Globetrotters, a University degree in psychology, tried at the beginning of the 1970s, unsuccessfully, on a Comeback as far as Springer, as a social worker, as a Manager of a discotheque chain, and training centers. After many UPS and downs, he returned in 2004, in the high-performance sport, as an Advisor to the U.S. Olympic team. But even that was short-lived. Beamon made his living as a visual artist and Director of the “Art of the Olympians Museum” in Fort Myers, Florida.
Privately, he also managed to bring continuity in his life. Four weddings are on his Vita, in the meantime, he is suffering from Diabetes – despite, as he says, active way of life. The hard lot of a man, the luck was seemingly fell in your lap. At that time, 50 years ago, in Mexico city. And yet he manages to make people happy. Three digits and a point, sometimes in between: “8.90”. Three digits, and everyone knows who we’re talking about. His name, he must write even behind it.