Word: beamon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Beamon breaks the world long-jump record by almost two feet with a leap...
...more dissimilar Olympians would be hard to imagine. Al Oerter is 32 and white, a hulking 260-pounder who lives with his wife and two children on suburban Long Island and works as supervisor of the computer communications department at Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. Bob Beamon is 22, black and bearded, a gangling 160-lb. product of the streets of New York who attends the University of Texas at El Paso on a track scholarship-and says that he would rather be playing basketball. Last week in Mexico City, each in his own way demonstrated what the Olympic Games...
...Olympic long jump was supposed to be a two-man contest between the U.S.'s Ralph Boston and Russia's Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, coholders of the world record (27 ft. 4¾ in.). Beamon's unpolished jumping style made purists shudder and write off as a fluke his indoor world record of 27 ft. 2¾ in. last March. Sometimes he took off from his right foot, sometimes from his left. He often did not bother to count his strides on the approach. In the qualification trials, he fouled on his first two jumps and barely made...
...Jesse Owens set a long-jump mark of 26 ft. 8¾ in. that stood for 25 years. Since 1960, Boston and Ter-Ovanesyan have between them broken the record six times, but managed to increase it by a grand total of only 8½ in. Then came Beamon. He charged down the runway and powered off the board, hands and arms flapping like a giant awkward bird. His body jackknifed, his legs spread-eagled before he slammed into the pit. When the Scoreboard flashed the result, the crowd gasped with disbelief. Beamon sank to his knees, hands clasped...
...meters to tie his own pending world record, and Georgia's Wyomia Tyus won the women's 100 in 11 sec. flat. Then, in the field events, there was Al Oerter's fourth straight discus victory and Bob Beamon's incredible long jump...