Then There Were Three

TRACK & FIELD

The long jump has been the exclusive bag of two men for so long that the event could have been called "The Ralph & Igor Show." Between them since 1960, the U.S.'s Ralph Boston, 28, and Russia's Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, 29, have broken and rebroken the world indoor and outdoor records eleven times, won four Olympic medals and dominated every meet they entered. So imagine the impertinence when a slender, 21-year-old sophomore from the University of Texas at El Paso swiped all the action from his elders.

Eight times so far this season, Bob Beamon has jumped against Boston, and beaten him every time. Ter-Ovanesyan has been sitting it out back home. Two months ago in Kansas City, Beamon sailed 27 ft. 1 in. to break the world indoor mark of 27 ft. set by the Russian in 1966. Two weeks ago, at the N.C.A.A. championships in Detroit, Beamon rubbed salt in the wound with a leap of 27 ft. 2 3/4 in.

To hear Bob talk, there's nothing to it, really. "I just jump," he says. Sprinting down the runway, he powers off the board, "windmilling" through the air until the last instant, when he extends his legs way out ahead of him--and sometimes plops right back down on his fanny, spoiling the jump. But most often Beamon defies gravity and thrusts himself forward. No one can explain quite how. Nor do track buffs understand much else that Beamon does. A 9.5-sec. sprinter in the 100, he races through his approach at a speed generally considered too tiring for an all-out jump. And Beamon is still deciding how far to run before takeoff: he usually favors a run of 134 ft, but both his world records came off runs of 114 ft. Moreover, he cannot be bothered counting strides or placing checkpoints along the runway with the result that while he prefers to take off from his right foot, he sometimes reaches the board with his left.

Love That Basketball. Son of a New York City shoemaker, Beamon only recently started concentrating on the long jump. True, he could jump better than 24 ft. when only a freshman at Jamaica High School in New York, but basketball was his love, he says. "I didn't have too much interest in track." All that changed at Texas when Coach Wayne Vandenburg got hold of him. As a freshman at the A.A.U. championships in Oakland last March, Beamon fouled on three of his four jumps. His one legal jump, though, was a full 15 in. better than he had ever done before--26 ft. 11 1/2 in., good enough for a new American indoor record.

Now that he has the world indoor record, Beamon has his sights on the outdoor record of 27 ft. 4 3/4 in., held jointly by Boston and Ter-Ovanesyan. And why not? After all, Bob got off a fantastic 27-ft. 7 1/2-in. jump at the N.C.A.A. championships, only to find that he had fouled by 1/2 in. Ultimately, he aims for a 28-ft. jump--the distance it may take to win in the Olympics. "I'm not in good shape yet," says he. "I haven't really started my training."

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