Long jump

• 1. Introduction

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  The long jump asks an athlete to compress speed, strength and agility into a single leap from a takeoff point into a pit of soft damp sand. It is one of two events grouped together as the horizontal jumps, sharing that label with the triple jump. Its roots reach back to the ancient Olympic Games of Greece. As a modern Olympic event it has held a place for men since the first Games in 1896 and for women since 1948. Behind that simple goal of jumping as far as possible sits a tangle of questions. Why did ancient jumpers carry weights in their hands? What makes the last two strides before takeoff matter so much? Why has one man's record from a single afternoon in Tokyo stood for decades? And why, in late 2025, did the sport try to abolish its own takeoff board and then change its mind?

• 2. The Ancient Contest

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  Chionis staged a jump at the 656 BC Olympics, a feat remembered as the most celebrated in the ancient sport. The long jump was the only known jumping event among the pentathlon contests of ancient Greece's original Olympics. Every event at those Games was meant to serve as training for warfare, and the long jump probably emerged because it mirrored crossing obstacles such as streams and ravines. Athletes carried a weight in each hand, called halteres, weighing between 1 and 4.5 kg. They swung these weights forward as they jumped to increase momentum. A common belief holds that the jumper threw the weights behind him in midair, but the halteres were held throughout the jump. Swinging them down and back at the end shifted the athlete's center of gravity and let him stretch his legs outward, adding distance. The jump was made from the bater, meaning that which is trod upon, most likely a simple board placed on the stadium track and removed afterward. Jumpers landed in a skamma, meaning a dug-up area. The idea that this was a pit full of sand is wrong; sand in the jumping pit is a modern invention. Music often accompanied the event, and Philostratus records that pipes would sometimes provide a rhythm for the complex movements of the halteres. Philostratus said: "The rules regard jumping as the most difficult of the competitions, and they allow the jumper to be given advantages in rhythm by the use of the flute, and in weight by the use of the halter." Modern scholars still argue over the event. Some have tried to recreate it as a triple jump, pointing to a source claiming a fifty-five ancient foot jump by a man named Phayllos. The surviving images remain the only evidence for the action, which is why most accept it resembled today's long jump.

• 3. Rules And Measurement

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  A layer of plasticine, placed at a 90 degree angle immediately after the board, exists to catch the moment a foot strays past the foul line. At the elite level competitors sprint down a runway, usually coated with the same rubberized all-weather surface as running tracks, and jump from a wooden or synthetic board 20 centimetres or eight inches wide, built flush with the runway. If any part of the foot passes the foul line, the jump is declared a foul and no distance is recorded. An official watches and makes the determination, and at elite meetings such as Diamond League events, camera technology and laser sensors have begun to replace the plasticine. The distance measured runs perpendicular from the foul line to the nearest break in the sand caused by any part of the body or uniform. Because of this, a competitor wants to get as close to the foul line as possible, and may place two marks along the side of the runway to assist with accuracy. Each competitor has a set number of attempts, normally three trials, with three more awarded to the best eight or nine. All valid attempts are recorded, but only the best mark counts, and the longest valid jump wins. In a multi-day elite competition a qualification round selects at least twelve finalists, usually in two groups of three attempts each. At the 2025 World Championships, World Athletics added a new procedure: after three trial jumps in the final, the top ten received a fourth attempt, the next top eight a fifth, and the next top six a sixth. For record purposes, the maximum accepted wind assistance is 2 m/s, a threshold that would later decide the fate of some of the longest leaps ever recorded.

• 4. The Vanished Reform

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  On the 5th of December 2025, World Athletics announced that a testing phase had been completed and a major reform had been ditched. The plan had been radical. Beginning with the 2025 indoor season, athletes took off from a wider zone instead of the traditional board. This 40 centimetre take-off zone was meant to cut the number of invalid attempts, which had reached around 30 percent in recent years. World Athletics believed the change would improve fairness and excitement for athletes while giving spectators a more thrilling experience. Under the trial, distance was measured from the exact point where the jumper's front foot left the zone, rather than perpendicular from the foul line. That effective jump distance determined the outcome of the competition. During the test phase, jumps were also recorded under the traditional rules, so they remained eligible for records and top lists. The experiment ended without becoming permanent, leaving the wooden board and the foul line in place.

• 5. Anatomy Of A Jump

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  Speed in the run-up and a high leap off the board are the fundamentals of success, which explains why many long jumpers also excel as sprinters. The classic examples of this long jump and sprint doubling are Carl Lewis and Heike Drechsler. There are five main components: the approach run, the last two strides, takeoff, action in the air, and landing. The approach aims to build gradually to a maximum controlled speed at takeoff. Velocity matters most for distance, and because elite jumpers leave the ground at an angle of 20 degrees or less, speed beats height as a focus. Approaches run between 12 and 19 steps at novice and intermediate levels, and closer to 20 to 22 steps at the elite level. The last two steps prepare the body while conserving speed. The penultimate step is longer than the others as the jumper lowers the center of gravity, and the final step is shorter as the body begins to raise it for takeoff. At takeoff the goal is a vertical impulse through the center of gravity with balance and control. The foot must land flat, since taking off heel-first brakes velocity and strains the joints, while taking off from the toes risks the leg buckling. Four styles of takeoff exist: the double-arm, the kick, the power sprint or bounding takeoff, and the sprint. The double-arm style swings both arms upward for high hip height and a large vertical impulse. The kick style cycles the leg before full impulse and demands strong hamstrings. The power sprint or bounding takeoff, one of the more common elite styles, fully extends the takeoff-side arm backward to add impulse. The sprint takeoff, the style most widely taught by coaches, uses a single-arm action to maintain velocity. The correct style varies from athlete to athlete, and the choice carries into what the body does once it leaves the ground.

• 6. Flight And The Banned Flip

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  Tuariki Delamere used a forward somersault at the 1974 NCAA Championships, matching the jump of the then Olympic champion Randy Williams. In the 1970s some jumpers turned to this front flip, which had the potential to produce longer jumps because no power was lost countering forward momentum and it reduced wind resistance in the air. The somersault was subsequently banned for fear that it was unsafe. The three major flight techniques that remain are the hang, the hitch-kick, and the sail, each meant to combat the forward rotation created at takeoff. Once airborne, an athlete cannot change direction or landing spot, but technique still shapes the landing and the distance measured. A jumper who lands feet first but falls back from poor balance loses distance. In the hang, the free leg descends until it aligns beneath the hips, stretching the body into a long streamlined shape that increases rotational inertia and slows rotation. When both legs reach a 180 degree angle to the ground with both knees beneath the hips, the jumper reaches the so-called 180 degree position, the point of greatest stability in flight. The hitch-kick uses a single-step cycle of the arms and legs to generate secondary rotations that counterbalance the initial spin. The sail technique has the jumper lift the legs to reach toward the toes, an entry-level approach useful for novices because it speeds the move into landing posture. Its weakness is that it fails to counter forward rotation effectively, which limits its value for longer jumps.

• 7. The Untouchable Records

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  On the 30th of August 1991, in a showdown at the World Championships in Tokyo, Mike Powell of the United States set the current men's world record. Carl Lewis surpassed Bob Beamon's old mark that same day, but his jump was wind-assisted and not legal for record purposes. That leap by Lewis remains the longest ever not to win an Olympic or World Championship gold medal, or any competition at all. The men's record has belonged to just four individuals for most of the time since the IAAF, now World Athletics, began ratifying records. The first mark recognized in 1912 was Peter O'Connor's performance from August 1901, which stood just short of 20 years. Jesse Owens set a mark at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan that went unbroken for over 25 years, until Ralph Boston broke it in 1960. Boston then exchanged records with Igor Ter-Ovanesyan three times over seven years. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Bob Beamon jumped at an altitude of 2292 m, a record that stood for almost 23 years and remains the second longest wind-legal jump of all time. Some of the longest leaps never counted. Iván Pedroso recorded a potential world record in Sestriere, but videotape revealed a person standing in front of the wind gauge, invalidating the reading and costing him a Ferrari valued at 130,000 dollars, the prize for breaking the record at that meet. The women's record has improved more steadily, yet the current mark has stood longer than any other long jump world record by men or women. Before it, the longest holder was Fanny Blankers-Koen during World War II, who kept the record for over 10 years. Galina Chistyakova of the former Soviet Union set the current women's world record when she leapt in Leningrad on the 11th of June 1988. Decades on, no one has matched her, and the women's event still carries the question of who, if anyone, will finally reach that line in the Leningrad sand.