Athletics at the 1968 Summer Olympics – Men's long jump


The men's long jump was one of four men's jumping events on the Athletics at the 1968 Summer Olympics program in Mexico City. Bob Beamon won in a new world record of ; a record which stood for 23 years until it was finally broken in 1991, when Mike Powell jumped at the World Championships in Tokyo.

Medalists

Records

Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were as follows.

Results

Qualifying

RankNameNationalityMarkNotes
1Ralph Boston8.27Q
2Bob Beamon8.19Q
3Lynn Davies7.94Q
4Jack Pani7.91Q
4Tõnu Lepik7.91Q
6Charles Mays7.85Q
7Reinhold Boschert7.79Q
8Mike Ahey7.77Q
9Lars-Olof Höök7.77Q
9Klaus Beer7.77Q
11Gérard Ugolini7.75Q
12Igor Ter-Ovanesyan7.74Q
13Victor Brooks7.72Q
14Allen Crawley7.71Q
15Andrzej Stalmach7.70Q
16Leonid Barkovskyy7.70Q
17Hiroomi Yamada7.67Q
18Pertti Pousi7.63
19Alan Lerwill7.62
20Laurent Sarr7.61
21Galdino Flores7.59
22Naoki Abe7.58
23Wellesley Clayton7.57
24Shinji Ogura7.57
25Philippe Housiaux7.44
26Michel Charland7.35
27Clément Sagna7.31
28Su Wen-ho7.30
29Anthony Chong7.29
30Jerry Wisdom6.99
31Chen Ming-chi6.71
32Don Vélez6.63
33Jean Cochard6.11
34Owen Meighan6.06
35Peter ReedNM

Final

Held on October 18, 1968

Beamon's jump

On his first jump, Bob Beamon landed near the far end of the sand pit but the optical device which had been installed to measure jump distances was not designed to measure a jump of such length. This forced the officials to bring a tape measure to gauge the jump manually, which added to the feat's aura. After several minutes, it was announced that Beamon had set a world record of, bettering the existing record by. When the announcer called out the distance for the jump, Beamon – unfamiliar with metric measurements – still did not realize what he had done. When his teammate and coach Ralph Boston told him that he had broken the world record by nearly 2 feet, his legs gave way and an astonished and overwhelmed Beamon suffered a brief cataplexy attack brought on by the emotional shock, and collapsed to his knees, his body unable to support itself, placing his hands over his face. The defending Olympic champion Lynn Davies told Beamon, "You have destroyed this event," and in sports jargon, a new adjective – Beamonesque – came into use to describe spectacular feats.
Prior to Beamon's jump, the world record had been broken thirteen times since 1901, with an average increase of and the largest increase being. Beamon's jump is still the Olympic record and years later remains the second longest wind legal jump in history. Sports journalist Dick Schaap wrote a book about the leap, The Perfect Jump, and the feat was named by Sports Illustrated magazine as one of the five greatest sports moments of the 20th century.