Word: beamon
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...expert and highly technical ignorance of track and field was involved. At the Olympics, a track writer is defined as a baseball writer with borrowed binoculars. Mysterious wonders on the order of Bob Beamon's 29-ft. 2 1/2-in. jump 16 years ago in Mexico City are preferable to bland details such as afternoon heats and evening temperatures in the congested regimen of a meticulous man listening to his body. "Looking back," Lewis says, "I think one trouble was just the fact that I had been No. 1 in my events for three years, and there was nothing...
...first jump, fouled on the second and folded the rest. If it was more than a foot less than he could have done, it was almost a foot more than he had to do. Stopping was good track and bad theater: some of the $60 customers, not including Bob Beamon, booed. "My friend lives," murmured Beamon, referring to a 29-ft. 2½-in. companion of his, a record now 16 years...
...them. The margin of victory, one-fifth of a second, tied the largest in Olympic 100 history. He cracked 10, but missed the 9.93 world record by .06 sec. Then his gaze shifted to the long jump, the 200 and the relay, to Jesse Owens certainly, maybe even Bob Beamon. The miraculous jump of 29 ft. 2½ in. might still be 4 in. beyond him, but it may be that nothing is beyond him. As the XXIII Olympiad turns for home, his medals will mark the rest of the way. ?By Tom Callahan. Reported by Steven Holmes, Joseph...
...When Bob Beamon long-jumped 29 ft. 2½ in. at Mexico City in 1968, and people said that nobody alive would ever break this record, Carl Lewis was seven. No one had ever jumped 28 ft. before, and Beamon would never manage even 27 ft. again. Whatever it is that allows mothers to lift automobiles to save their babies launched him nearly 2 ft. beyond the record. "But it's impossible. I can't believe it," he said, sliding to his knees. "It's madness, I tell you. I'm going to be sick...
...Lewis heard of Beamon's jump then, it was not until Carl had turned ten that he took exact measure of the distance in his front yard, and thought, "This doesn't make sense. How could a human being do this?" He meant to find out. By 16, Lewis had old headlines pasted up on his bedroom wall, amended with his own name: CARL LEWIS, KING OF THE 27-FT. JUMPERS. From the age of two, he had grown up in Willingboro, where his parents had moved to avoid desegregation troubles in Birmingham and to pursue graduate studies and teaching...