Dear Editor,

Tajay Gayle shocked Jamaica and the athletics world by becoming the first Jamaican to win a world or Olympic long jump gold medal. Now his coach, the great Stephen Francis, is quoted as saying Gayle could be the greatest long jumper ever. Jamaicans should believe Francis. I certainly do.

Francis has good reason for thinking so. In Doha, Gayle exhibited three critical elements of the event: speed on the runway, maximum use of the board, and extraordinary height off it. Over a lifetime of watching and reporting various sports one of the most memorable was a side-on view of Bob Beamon’s breathtaking jump at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. That day it looked as if he had jumped, if not over the moon, certainly out of the pit, such was the height he achieved. I had almost the same reaction watching Gayle’s winning jump on television.

They say records are made to be broken. I never imagined Beamon’s would be. It lasted 23 years until another American, Mike Powell, did just that in 1991. Apart from Beamon’s speed and height, which stunned the world, there were two other extraordinary aspects to that 1968 feat. Beamon confessed afterwards that he feared he had left the Olympic gold medal in bed, because shortly before the final he had partaken of that forbidden fruit which it is alleged — I wasn’t a witness to that one — Adam and Eve consumed back in the Garden of Eden. The other aspect, less talked about, was his landing in the pit. He did not fall away sideways or backwards, thus reducing the distance with various body parts disturbing the sand, as other jumpers do. He landed like a helicopter.

Francis has shown the world, in Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, exactly what sprinting perfection looks like. We are unlikely to see better in our lifetime. Landing in the pit, as Beamon did, is now the lost skill of the event. Back in time, for instance in the 1948 Olympics in London, jumpers could routinely do so. Today, the only one I’ve seen doing so, albeit occasionally, is Cuban-born triple jumper Pedro Pichardo (now in Portugal’s colours), who won the 2015 PanAm Games gold doing so. Indeed, I would wager that Gayle’s jump was so outstanding that had he landed correctly he would have come perilously close to Powell’s 18-year-old world record.

Coach Francis has got Gayle to take off and soar like a jet plane. He now faces another tough challenge in his illustrious career: Get Gayle to land like a helicopter, on just the soles of his two feet. If that happens, he could not only erase Beamon’s and Powell’s marks, but become the first nine-metres long jumper in history. That would be an achievement of Usain Bolt-like proportions.

Errol W A Townshend

Ontario, Canada

ewat@rogers.com