On his record jump, Beamon got terrific speed on his approach, stretched out his last step to the board, and got his feet together when he landed. 'So I went into town and had a shot of tequila. He also wasn't getting along with his wife. He had lost his scholarship at Texas El-Paso for participating, with other blacks, in a boycott of a meet against Brigham Young, a Mormon school whose racial policies disturbed them. The night before the finals, Beamon had been concerned, his mind going over his personal problems.

Beamon followed the advice and qualified. Before his last try, Boston told him to relax and to take off a foot before he reached the board if he had to, but to be sure not to foul. He fouled on his first two qualifying jumps. While Beamon had an outstanding season in 1968, he almost didn't qualify for the finals at the Olympics. He worked on his speed and perfecting a technique in which the jumper does not so much jump as walk in the air. He wasn't thrilled by life there, and after his grandmother died he transferred to Texas-El Paso, a growing track power. Beamon went to North Carolina A&T to be near his ailing grandmother. Nobody would want to ruin your shooting eye or your shooting arm.'Д«eamon was even better in track, and his prep coach convinced him to stick with it. If you're good in it, everybody respects you. So I went hot and heavy for basketball - and I feel it saved me from being cut up. If you stayed decent, you stood a good chance of being clobbered every day. If you joined one of the gangs, you might escape harm but you also might be in trouble the rest of your life. 'You had to be constantly alert - ready to fight or run. 'My high school (in Jamaica) was a jungle,' he said. He says his craving for attention to replace a lost mother's love first made him a troublemaker and clown in school. Her death left a void he found difficult replacing. When he was an infant, his mother died from tuberculosis. It was a record Beamon would keep for almost 23 years, until Mike Powell hit 29-4ВЅ on Aug. In one jump, Beamon stretched the record by an incredible one foot, 9Вѕ inches.

But from 1960 to 1967, the record was broken or tied eight times by Boston or Ter-Ovanesyan - yet it had climbed just 8ВЅ inches. Jesse Owens had set a record of 26-8Вј in 1935 that had held up for 25 years. 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.'Д«efore Beamon's leap, the farthest long jump had been 27 feet, 4Вѕ inches, by Ter-Ovanesyan and Ralph Boston. He had jumped one foot, 10ВЅ inches farther than his previous best. He snapped the existing mark by almost two feet. Records are supposed to be broken by inches, not by demolition. Not only did he become the first 29-foot long jumper that evening he became the first to pass 28 feet, too. He had leaped where no one had gone before. 18, 1968 in Mexico City.Д«ob Beamon got plenty of air under him on his amazing leap of 29-2ВЅ at the Mexico City Games in 1968.Д«eamon didn't just set a record he shattered one. Of all Olympic records, none is as impressive as the one Beamon stunningly set Oct. 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, 2ВЅ inches later. That's all it took for Bob Beamon to leap into history.

Long jump half life