Rio 2016

Fabian Heinle: won the Long Jump with 7.91m - Europe's best this year.

So I decided to take in the Jumping at the International Junior Gala U20 Track and Field at Mannheim this weekend and barged in to hang out with the UK team. I  sauntered up to this bloke in his 60s-ish in a UK track suit and started bragging about how great a long jumper I was at school, but he curiously didn't seem particularly impressed.  Turns out he was Alan Lerwill. OMG - as is the contemporary acronym - Alan Lerwill!  He was my bloody hero in the 1970s.  Olympic Long Jump finalist in Munich, Commonwealth Games Gold medallist, UK High Jump record holder. Whoops.

Lerwill was competing in the Mexico Olympics in 68 when Bob Beamon performed the greatest athletic feat ever. Lerwill was talking to his coach, Tom McNab (technical director for Chariots of Fire), when Beamon jumped further than the optical measuring device's range, so the officials had to find a tape measure. When they announced the distance, 8.90m, neither Lerwill nor McNab knew what that meant - they had to use conversion tables to feet and inches, but the Long Jump tables didn't go that far either, so they had to use the tables for the Shot Put.  Beamon had jumped 29ft 2 1/2 inches, breaking the World Record by nearly two feet. 45 years later it's still the Olympic Record.

As for the Junior Gala, Alan is here coaching the  UK U20 team. The UK male jumpers, Efe Uwaifu, Elliot Safu and Feron Sayers are all very polite kids. Efe and Elliot are going to Harvard next year.  Harvard! Why Harvard? What's wrong with UTK? Elliot wants to study chemistry, even! We have a great track and field team. I did try to do a bit of recruiting myself, though. If UT has the scholarships I know who they need, now. Go Vols!

Some of these kids will become Olympic Champions (the reigning Olympic  Champion won here in 2005), others won't make it at all. It's a rough, tough life they have.  Efe couldn't get it right yesterday. Either too much energy and a no-jump or not enough energy. Alan told him to approach in a more upright posture but it seemed to me that he lost forward  momentum doing that. You need to drive forward with maximum speed then straighten up just before hitting the board. Mind you, I'm not exactly the one who has been coaching this for the last 50 years, am I? So I kept my trap shut for once.

What makes a 16-year-old GIVE UP?

I gave up pronto, I did, in 1976, on a dark afternoon in the dark country, Wolverhampton, England.

I had feverishly trained at long jumping for four summers, several times a week. My run up was paced perfectly to hit the board, with two checkmarks, my hang technique was impeccable, and I had made it to the National Under-17 final.

There it all ended abruptly! There were eight of us, and I finished a solid, emphatic last, more than a foot behind the lad in seventh place, and a meter behind the winner, Gus Udo. Outclassed, depressed, I realised the talent just wasn't there. That's what makes a 16-year-old give up. I never jumped again. Not once.

Not so my training partner Tim Newenham who kept going, threw javelin at the Commonwealth Games, became National Javelin Coach then fitness coached the tennis player Tim Henman for five years (Henman's the English guy who reached the Wimbledon semi-finals four times and lost each one, thus firmly cementing the national sense of sporting futility!). Now, with pleasure I see Tim N. is javelin coaching Oliver Bradfield from my same old athletics club, and Oliver last year threw 63m, the best throw in the world for his age, and this year over 75m, breaking the UK U15 record by over two meters. Way to go Ollie and Tim!

As for Gus, well, his 7.08m winning jump in 1976 broke the championship record, and he also won the high jump. I couldn't seem to get away from him, because we both ended up at Harvard a few years later. He, however, was the revered co-captain of the Crimson track team while yours truly gave him a wide berth. Fingers burned, you see...


Oliver Bradfield, wearing that same Norfolk County athletics vest I wore 34 years ago (brings tears to one's eyes, it does :-)).