Even at 55 years’ distance, Bob Beamon’s gravity-defying leap at the 1968 Olympics takes the breath away. I watched it again after World Athletics floated plans to scrap the long jump board in favour of a large “take-off zone” to eliminate fouls, and it remains six seconds of sporting perfection. Those 19 rhythmic strides down the runway, the board hit with millimetric precision. Then Beamon’s long legs launching and fluttering high through the Mexico air, like a man pedalling furiously on an imaginary recumbent bicycle, before landing 8.90 metres away.
The American didn’t just break the world record that day. He shattered it by 55 centimetres. As Sports Illustrated put it: “Beamon, in effect, had taken off into thin air in the year 1968 and landed somewhere in the next century.” But now long jump risks being changed forever – for the worse.
