You Tube Gold: Bob Beamon’s Leap Into Legend
His record was eventually broken, but it took 23 years and no one will ever break one the way he did again.
The 1968 Olympic Games came at a time of great turmoil in the world. During that year, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The French were out in the streets and in Chicago that summer, the Democratic Convention basically erupted into what was later called a police riot.
Many African-Americans boycotted the Mexico City games as a political protest; others famously protested while receiving medals.
It was a time of stress and anxiety around the world.
Beamon opted not to boycott and when he took off on his fateful jump, no one knew what was about to happen.
Beamon didn’t just break a record by fractions or an inch. He obliterated it, pushing the new record out by 55 centimeters, or 21 2⁄3 inches. He broke the record by nearly two feet.
It’s incomprehensible.
When he realized what he had done Beamon collapsed and wept, overcome. He could have stopped there with an achievement that would have lived as long as the Games but he went back to see if he could top himself.
He couldn't. Not even Beamon could surpass that bolt from the heavens. It was, and remains, the greatest feat in the history of track and field.