The North East has a great deal to be proud of when it comes to long jump.
Currently it is home to the British Record holder in the form of Chris Tomlinson.
Each event in athletics boasts it's heroes. Below is a brief biography of one of the most renowned long jumpers of his time.
New York Times Magazine correspondent Trip Gabriel observed that Carl Lewis "has embodied the
heartbreak of fulfilled promise. He was, by any measurement, the greatest track-and-field athlete of all time, yet Americans refused to warm to him. He won four gold medals at Los Angeles, yet he emerged from the [1984] Games less popular than he was before they began. The public found him
arrogant and
overly calculating in his attempts to cash in on his victories in a supposedly amateur sport." Since then, according to Gabriel, both Lewis and his fans have matured. The athlete "has become revered, as much for his
longevity as for anything else." Public reverence for the athlete translated to
hearty cheers in Barcelona, Spain, in 1992 as Lewis - at the age of 31 - won Olympic gold in the long jump and the 400-meter relay.
A Lifetime of Dedication
"I always had the feeling that I was born to do something. I'm convinced that God has given me the talent," Lewis asserted in the
Philadelphia Daily News. Born on July 1, 1961, in Birmingham, Alabama, Frederick Carlton Lewis is the son of two star athletes who attended
Tuskegee Institute. His father, Bill, ran track and played football; his mother, Evelyn, was a world-class hurdler who represented the United States at the 1951 Pan-American Games. By the time Carl was born, the third of four children, the elder Lewises were coaching young athletes in track and field events.
When Carl was still a youngster, his family moved to Willingboro, New Jersey. There his parents worked as high school teachers and founded the Willingboro Track Club. Ray Didinger noted in a Philadelphia Daily News profile that Lewis's parents considered their youngest son "the third-best athlete in a family of four" and encouraged him to pursue music lessons instead. Carl had other ideas. He went out into his back yard, measured off twenty-nine feet, two-and-a-half inches, and stuck a strip of tape on the ground. The distance was one that even the world's best athletes could not meet, but young Carl Lewis began jumping toward it with singular determination.
"Carl didn't just go after his goals, he stalked them," Bill Lewis commented in the Philadelphia Daily News. "He was a serious kid. There was nothing flighty about him. Some kids want to be a fireman one day, a movie star the next. Carl set his mind on track and that was it. He said he wanted to be the best, period."
Striving to pass his older brothers Mack and Cleve - and even his younger sister Carol - Lewis began high school predicting that he would achieve a distance of 25 feet in the long jump. Skinny and small, he lost far more meets than he won. "I believed setting goals was the only way I could get where I wanted to go," Lewis explained in the Philadelphia ily News. "I studied track. Being around my parents and the club helped a lot. But I knew, in the final analysis, it was up to me. I never lacked for confidence. Even when I was younger, when I was losing a lot, I felt it was only a matter of time before I was the best." Indeed, Lewis was once singled out at a Philadelphia track meet for youngsters by Jesse Owens himself, who urged the other children to follow the example of "this spunky little guy."
A late
bloomer, Lewis finally reached his goal of a 25-foot jump during his junior year at Willingboro High School. In 1978 he won at the national junior championships with a 9.3-second time in the 100-yard run and a 25-foot 9-inch long jump. He also received an All-American ranking in the 200-meter sprint. When he graduated from Willingboro in 1979, Lewis was the top-ranked high school track athlete in the country. The years of dedicated practice, the quiet self-confidence, and the sense of destiny had set the stage for a
phenomenal track and field career.
"King Carl"
In the autumn of 1979 Lewis entered the University of Houston on an athletic scholarship. There he worked with coach Tom Tellez, an expert on body mechanics who suggested improvements in Lewis's style of jumping. Lewis was perceived as a natural talent who could also implement new strategies without suffering setbacks. After just one year of college he qualified for the 1980 Olympic team and was one of the many athletes who saw opportunity pass them by when former President Jimmy Carter cancelled the United States' participation in the Games.
Instead of wallowing in self-pity, Lewis solidified his top national ranking in the long jump and the 100-meter dash at the 1981 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) indoor championships. He was the first athlete to win two events at an NCAA championship and was awarded the Amateur Athletic Union's Sullivan Award.
In 1982 Lewis left the University of Houston to compete under the
auspices of the Santa Monica Track Club in California. Coach Tellez followed him west and continued to work closely with him. By 1983 Lewis had become a winner in four categories: long jump, 100-meter run, 200-meter run, and 400-meter relay. He notified the world that he was ready for the 1984 Olympics by winning three gold medals at the track and field world championships in Helsinki, Finland, in 1983. During the early months of 1984 he set an indoor world record by long jumping twenty-eight feet, ten-and-a-half inches. With speed, consistency, and desire, Lewis looked like a conquering hero who would return from the 23rd Olympics covered with gold medals.
This section will introduce some ideas around the requirements for long jumpers.
The articles are various ideas from around the world and will hopefully stimulate coaches to study and decide the way forward for the athletes they are associated with.
It is important to acknowledge the individual anomolies that exist and apply the appropriate regime that will produce the performance related to those aspects.
There are a number of ways of acheiving the final outcome and the challenge for the coach is to discover the way forward, which suits the individual/s they coach, to produce the best results.
It is very easy to study a subject and, because there are a mutitude of opinions, allow the decision processes to become over complicated therefore clouding the vision to the priorities.
The event itself demands a great deal of ability in both speed and strength and can be extremely frustrating in competition.
There is a need to take speed, combined with accuracy and application of strength in order to deliver the performance.
The speed has to be fast but optimum.
Click below to access an article regarding the philosophy for the long jump
Starting out
The accuracy must be perfect.
The application of strength needs to be intense.
Click below to access links to items/websites which will introduce the world of athletics and coaching.
The speed and precision of the run up is vital aspect of the performance. Click the link below to access an article written by Vladimir Popov on the development of these aspects.
There is a great deal more to performance than the event itself.
Below is an item written by Patrick J. Cohn. Ph.D (Mental Game Coach)
