Hello everyone,
Today, I will be talking about the life of Bob Beamon. Bob fought adversity and set an Olympic record in such an unthinkable fashion that it even led to the creation of the adjective Beamonesque. One of the greatest moments in Olympic history has been forgotten by the general public. So, it is up to me to tell his story the right way. To be honest, I only found out about Beamon due to the YouTube documentary about Bobs in sports, the gift that keeps on giving.
Bob was born on the 29th of August 1946, one year after the Russian and Americans entered Berlin without permission from the Germans. He would be one of the first babies of his generation called the Baby Boomers, a generation that grew up during a period of unprecedented economic growth and stability. This, however, didn’t apply to every single baby born during that period, especially babies like Beamon, born in poor neighborhoods such as South Jamaica in Queens, New York. Beamon had a truly traumatic childhood with his mother spending great part of his younger life in the hospital and with his father routinely ending up in jail. The lower you fall, the higher you fly, this sentence can be applied perfectly in this context, but more on that later. Due to a problematic family situation Bob never had a true home, having always lived in foster homes and sometimes with his grandma. In order not to be beaten up or shot (New York was rough back then) he eventually joined a gang called the Frenchmen. They stole things (the trend continues once again) spent the day drinking and smoked the devil’s lettuce - weed for the more uncultured ones. The group was composed of 15 individuals ages 12 to 15, I mean 12 is the new 22 (not in that way, you twisted people). Life then took a turn for the better regarding young Bob as he finally started living full time with his grandma. Family knows best. He switched schools and completely changed his behavior acting with more maturity. At this time, he started jumping competitively and oh boy, was he a star! Bob won the competition for long jump in the state of New York!
He dominated the competition to such an extreme that Beamon eventually received a full scholarship to North Carolina University. Just before leaving for North Carolina, he got married with a young woman aged 16 that was carrying his child. Different times, I guess. This marriage wouldn’t last, as Bob got annoyed at the young woman for having a miscarriage. Bob, I don’t think you know what a miscarriage is, but you do you.
Bob eventually transferred to the University of Texas at El Paso to get coached by the great Wayne Vandenburg. This is where Bob took the next step becoming one of the best jumpers in the US, totally dominating competition. Then, tragedy struck, Martin Luther King was murdered in April 1968. This truly affected Beamon as he was a passionate and vocal defendant of equality. Following his death Bob organized a boycott of an event featuring BYU university, a Mormon institution. Just for some context, the Book of Mormon, which the Mormons follow is a tiny bit racist as it says that people should aspire to be white and delightsome. Bob I’m with you on this one. Nine black athletes refused to participate in the event and got treated the same way you would treat the people that genuinely believe the earth is flat or in horoscopes, they got kicked out.
So, five months before the Olympics, the 23-year-old Beamon found himself in a bit of a pickle as he didn’t have funding, team or even a coach. He thought of giving up, but eventually got his things together and persevered with the ex-Olympic Champion Ralph Boston as his coach. With the fire still burning inside him, he successfully qualified for the Olympics in the last jump of the qualifiers.
The 1968 Mexico City Games marked the first time they would be televised so it provided Beamon a pathway to make history that would be remembered to this day. Unfortunately, these Games got off to a bad start due to the podium incident where two different American Black Athletes protested against racism by raising their fist wearing a black glove, something that would eventually lead to both athletes being kicked out of the Olympic Village, which caused outrage throughout the world. For Beamon, it was just more fuel for the fire. After, once again, qualifying to the final in his final jump, it was Bob’s time to shine. The night before the final is where the story truly begins as several reports say that, on that night, Beamon left the village and went to the bar and got drunk, while others say he spent the night having sex with his high school sweetheart. Either way, my boy Beamon was a dawg, no debating that.
The day finally arrived, the wind was blowing hard, but not hard enough to disqualify any jump attempt to get the record. It was, by all means, the perfect day to make history. After three regular jumps by his competitors it was our main man’s turn to perform the first of the five jumps, he was allowed. Years later, Bob would say in an interview that he was so focused on that jump that, by his account , there was nobody around him, just him and the line to jump. Just for context, at that time the long jump was a relatively recent event, one that had only started being perfected after the war. The world record had been beat 8 different times during the last 17 years, but had only increased by 17cm and stood at 8,33m. It was accepted that humans were reaching their maximum and there was almost no room for improvement.
Bob took a deep breath, ran as fast as he possibly could, and jumped without stepping on the red line, the jump was legal. After six whole seconds since he started running Bob finally landed on the sand, a landing that caused such an impact that the momentum threw Beamon a bit forward. Everybody was shocked. The crowd cheered astonished at what they had just seen, the referees amazed at the jump tried to figure out how they would measure the jump and Bob himself was seen baffled at the achievement. Measuring a regular jump was a easy thing as the event had prepared a technology that correctly measured the jumps. There was one problem, it only measured jumps until 8,50m as it was considered that a jump bigger than that was impossible. So out came the tape measure and 15 minutes later the results were announced. Bob hadn’t jump just 8,5m nor 8,6m, he had jumped 8,90m, breaking the record by 57cm. One year later, Neil Armstrong would be the first man to take a step on the moon and proffer the iconic sentence "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Sorry Neil, I like you and everything, but the people attending the 1968 Mexico Games witnessed the true giant leap. The competition was now essentially over, Beamon was heads and shoulders better than everyone else in the world. When it came to the trophy ceremony, Bob came prepared, showing off a pair of black socks as a symbol of protest against the racism in the US. He was prepared for the worse but, surprisingly, he got off without any penalization. I like to think that what he did was so impressive that the organization just let him have that one.
Bob’s jump is nowadays referred to as the Leap of the Century and still stands today as a Olympic Record, one of the oldest standing. This just goes to show that even with all the progress in technology, training and recuperation, our boy Beamon was truly a different beast, one that deserves recognition for a long time, even if it comes from an average university student like myself.