Men's Triple Jump in the 1990's

Jonathan Edwards broke his own triple-jump world record twice in one afternoon (Wikipedia suggests it was in the space of about twenty minutes) at the World Athletics Championships in Gothenburg in the summer of 1995. Eighteen and a half years on and nobody has beaten the lesser of these two distances of 18.16 m (the winning jump of 1992 was 18.17 m but was wind-assisted so did not constitute a world record). Eighteen and a half years on and I don't think I have witnessed a greater exhibition of sporting supremacy.

The year after Gothenburg and Edwards went to the Olympics in Atlanta. He finished second with a jump of 17.88 m. Nobody has jumped further in the Olympics and not won gold. In fact nobody has jumped further in the four Olympics since Atlanta. That includes Edwards himself, who won gold at Sydney in 2000 with a jump some 17 cm shorter than his best effort of 1996. The slope graph below shows just how great the achievements of Mike Conley (1992), Kenny Harrison (1996) and Edwards were.

Data: databaseolympics.com, olympic.org. Hat-tip to Wikipedia for helping me fill in the memory gaps.

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