50 years ago, Bob Beamon made history. Where does his performance rank on list of greatest singular sports performances?

Add.....McClymonds HS in Oakland.

MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:

Totally agree wrote:

You mean 74 (and with buns).

But in reality, his 2007 victory over Kobayashi (proclaimed by ESPN announcers as the greatest moment in US sporting history) was more dramatic. That really defined the field for the next decade.

So would you say 74 and 71 (both with the bun) are ahead of Beamon? Where would you rank Bundy's 4TD?

How about the performance of Steve Nebraska in The Scout? 27 strikeouts on 81 pitches for the Yankees vs the Cardinals in the Game 1 of the World Series? AND he hit 2 HRs in their 2-0 win!!

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

longjack wrote:

mexico results are dodgy from top to bottom.

ucla sprinters on roids,

windy long jump 3 to 5 meters per second.

gauges recording zero often beside a flag blowing like mad...

altitude way way over acceptable limits.

lewis 30 ft jump is the pinnacle,

beamon nowhere in sight.

look at beamon's second best jumps at sea level...

bla bla bla

Were you stoned when you wrote this?

Which begs the question: why not have three gauges on the runway or over the last 100 of the track (for 100/200) and average the wind?

check the wind.

you decide.

there are many other angles, gusts, no wind etc.....

however to be fair, the margin of victory over ralph boston, of 70 plus cm, is the main indicator that the jump was legit.

then again, in events that are favored by altitude, there is nearly a one hundred percent rate or WR or OR in both men and women's events.

so there you have it, the greatest performance of all time, you have everything going for you,

at the end of the day, we're talking 28 ft and a bit at sea level... minus the probable wind and altitude,

for the 100m you're talking gains of 0.12 at least.... 0.24 for the 200 and 0.5 for the 400.....

The reason no one's breaking the long jump record on a regular basis is because no one cares about the event anymore, and there's no money in the field events in professional track and field anyway, we all saw that recently when letsrun published the salaries of a bunch of elite track athletes. I wish I was wrong, but that's the reality of our sport these days.

But it really starts even younger than that, look at the high school rankings...a kid capable of running sub 11 seconds FAT in the 100, should be capable of long jumping over 24 feet with the proper takeoff angle and technique...yet looking at Milesplit for outdoor track in 2018 there were over 1,000 boys in the US with wind legal 100 meter dash times of 10.99 or better, and only 16 boys in the US cleared 24 feet in the long jump. Only 133 boys even cleared 23 feet in the long jump last year. It's crazy, the long jump is a whole order of magnitude worse in the US at the high school level than the sprints. Why? The kids don't want to do it, and the ones that do and have the speed aren't getting the coaching they need to jump 23-24+ feet. Most of these kids would rather be the 1,000th worse sprinter in the US than be the 17th longest jumper. And why would they? Half the time the field events are held off to the side, where no one's watching. There's just no fame to be had in the long jump for a kid that can run 10 meters per second, not when he's likely already the fastest kid at his school.

Then the problem is compounded at the D1 college level with the 12.5 scholarship limit, and even worse, the constant pressure to keep men's track programs small to offset football. Few college coaches want to invest in jumpers and most can't afford to even give them roster spots to walk on unless they are guaranteed to score at conference, and as I showed above, we aren't producing very many high school long jumpers capable of scoring at a D1 conference out of the box. Most colleges are going to focus on either sprints or distance where a single athlete can score in multiple events. Then you can add that most of the college jumps coaches are part time, have to coach all of the jumps and often also coach the multi event athletes as well, if the school has a dedicated jumps coach at all. The expertise and time just isn't there to take our few top high school jumpers to the next level.

Lastly "professional" track is a joke for the field events, the top jumpers and throwers make 10% of what the top sprinters and distance runners make. And then you have boneheaded ideas like rotating Diamond League events from one year to the next...so the long jump isn't a Diamond League event this year? So what's all of the pro long jumpers supposed to do? Guess they'll have to become world class triple or high jumpers this year. It's not like the sprints or distance events where the top guys can step up or down in distance a little bit and still compete, most field eventers are specialists. But the problems for the long jump are compounded even more, because almost anyone capable of breaking the world record in the long jump could probably also be competitive as a sprinter. Powell hit 11.1 meters per second on the runway during his world record jump, anyone capable of running that fast can likely run close to 10 flat or faster for the 100m with training. Just look at Carl Lewis and Dwight Phillips for examples. Even the 20th fastest 100m guy in a given year probably makes more money than the top long jumper, so why would anyone focus on the long jump? Dwight Phillips regularly filled in a lane for sprint races to pay the bills, he probably made more money doing that than being the worlds best long jumper for the better part of a decade.

So no, it's not likely we'll see another world record long jump anytime soon, and if we do it will likely be decades more before it gets broken again. Maybe a jumper from a country with more state level support can do it like the new kid from Cuba, but we won't likely see another world record long jumper from the US anytime soon.

Jonesbros wrote:

why not have three gauges on the runway or over the last 100 of the track (for 100/200) and average the wind?

Because the runners and jumpers would crash into them.