Word: beamon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...professionalization of sport is, of course, not just a Chinese phenomenon. Aided by exhausting, full-time training programs, the latest in technology and, on occasion, banned substances, performances in virtually every sport have improved by literal leaps and bounds over the past quarter-century. Hallowed records such as Bob Beamon's long jump have fallen as top-level athletes train so single-mindedly that the idea of Roger Bannister's breaking the four-minute mile in 1954 as a diversion from his medical studies seems almost absurdly quaint...
Gaps like these are as rare as the gods that produce them. By 1968, no one had ever long-jumped more than 27 ft. 4 3/4 in. In the Mexico City Olympics that year, Bob Beamon jumped 29 ft. 2 1/2 in.--this in a sport in which records are broken by increments of a few inches, sometimes fractions. (Yes, the air is thin in Mexico City, but it was a legal jump and the record stood for an astonishing 23 years...