It’s One Giant Leap Backward This Time

One question I hear often is about the best sporting event I’ve ever covered. The answer changes according to my mood, or my memory, on the day I’m asked. On Monday, it would have been the men’s long jump competition in the 1991 track and field World Championships in Tokyo.

I was thinking, wistfully, about that night while getting ready to watch a bunch of 26-foot jumpers in the final of the U.S. Olympic track and field trials at Cal State Sacramento and wondering about the three feet lost between now and then.

It would be misleading to say that we were expecting a 29-foot jump that hot August night in Tokyo, like they occurred every day or even every decade.

Bob Beamon held the world record--with his still amazing 29-foot-2 1/2-inch jump at Mexico City in 1968--but only one other jumper had reached 29 feet in the next 23 years.

Still, it seemed possible. Carl Lewis appeared primed, not merely because of his 10-year, 65-meet winning streak in the event, but also because he had reclaimed the world record in the 100 meters a few days before.

Something definitely was in the air. Observers who had been in Mexico City in ’68 said that the weather conditions were very similar to those when Beamon made his jump. The wind was swirling, you couldn’t cut the humidity with a javelin and Typhoon No. 14 was rapidly approaching from the gulf. There was no lightning, like when Robert Redford came to bat in “The Natural,” but the air was literally crackling.

It was a good competition between Lewis and Mike Powell through their first three jumps, then became one for the ages. Before it was over, four of the seven longest jumps of all time would be recorded.

Lewis jumped farther than he ever had before, or would again, on his fourth jump at 29-2 3/4, although it was wind-aided. Powell topped it, and Beamon, on his fifth jump at 29-4 1/2. Lewis’ fifth jump was 29-1 1/4. Powell fouled on his sixth and final jump and then waited for Lewis to finish.

“I timed it,” he said later. “It was five minutes and 31 seconds from the time [Lewis] walked onto the runway to the time he jumped. My heart was beating very quickly. I started to feel faint. . . . I hoped not, but deep down, I thought he would beat me.”

Not this time. Lewis finished with a jump of 29-0.

*

Where have you gone, Carl Lewis?

Mike Powell?

Bob Beamon?

Jesse Owens?

“I think it disrespects us,” Erick Walder, one of the long-jump finalists Monday night, said of talk like, well, this. “ . . . Just because those guys are [retired] doesn’t mean that we can’t pick up where they left off.”

But, on Monday night, only one jumper, Melvin Lister, went over 27 feet, winning at 27-3 3/4. The next two berths in Sydney, Australia were won by Dwight Phillips at 26-8 1/2 and Walter Davis at 26-7 1/4.

Forget Lewis and Powell and Beamon. Owens could have made this team with his best of 26-8 1/4 in 1935.

What happened? There are numerous theories, one being that not even our best long jumpers give the event the attention it requires. All three of this year’s Olympians are also triple jumpers. Another is that they don’t jump farther because they don’t have to. No one is pushing them, like Larry Myricks did Lewis and Lewis did Powell. All I know for sure is that if the milers had reacted to Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute barrier like the long jumpers have to Lewis and Powell, we’d be lucky today to see anyone running under five minutes.

*

Today, at 39, Lewis could fall out of bed and land at 27 feet.

I’m not suggesting he should make a comeback. As with Jackie Joyner-Kersee, I prefer to remember him in his prime. Fortunately, he resisted when the late Primo Nebiolo, the former president of the international track and field federation, tried to talk him out of retirement in 1997 and again when his former coach, Tom Tellez, begged him to return last year.

Lewis knew that he could not hope for a better ending to his remarkable career than the one four years ago, when he won the gold medal in Atlanta.

I suppose the ending could have been more perfect if the coach of the U.S. men’s team, the University of California’s Erv Hunt, had selected him to run in the 400-meter relay, giving Lewis a chance to become the first Summer Olympian to win 10 gold medals.

Hunt had his reasons, none very compelling after one of the other relay runners, Leroy Burrell, withdrew because of an injury. As the coach, Hunt’s priority in that situation should have been on winning. I’m not sure his team could have done that even if he had made another decision, but it would have had a better chance if Canada’s Donovan Bailey had been required to run down Lewis on the anchor leg.

Not that Hunt could change his mind today, even if he was so inclined. I just enjoy bringing up the subject to needle the sport’s still active anti-Lewis faction.

Lewis was full of himself in 1984, when he was 23, but he matured and became one of the sport’s best ambassadors.

I’m not sure why the track nuts never warmed up to him. I guess that’s why they’re called nuts.

*

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Olympic Trials Finals

Top three finishers in events qualify for the United States’ 2000 Summer Olympic team:

MEN’S LONG JUMP

1. Melvin Lister: 27-3 3/4

2. Dwight Phillips: 26-8 1/2

3. Walter Davis: 26-7 1/4

WOMEN’S 4OO HURDLES

1. Sandra Glover: 53.33

2. Kim Batten: 54.70

3. Tonja Buford-Bailey: 54.80

WOMEN’S JAVELIN

1. Lynda Blutreich: 191-2

2. Kim Kreiner: 187-2

3. Emily Carlsten: 186-11

Only Blutreich qualified for the Olympics under the B standard.

WOMEN’S DISCUS

1. Seilala Sua: 216-2

2. Suzy Powell: 211-10

3. Kristin Kuehl: 202-7