The sun shone and a light breeze blew across Gothenburg’s Ullevi Stadium in 1995 as the world’s best triple jumpers lined up for their event. Among them stood a 29-year-old from Great Britain in the form of his life, ready to create history.
Jonathan Edwards was unaware, though, that on August 7, at the world championships, his life and his event would be changed forever.
The triple jump is an extremely technical event. With a sprint along a runway followed by a hop, step, and jump into the pit, it needs precision, power, and speed. And on a day never to be forgotten, Edwards came as close as anyone has to perfecting it.
Opening the 1995 season with a new personal best of 17.58metres, something felt different for Edwards.
With an astonishing but illegal jump of 18.43m in Lille due to a 2.4m per second tailwind, Edwards was clearly on another level. The world record of 17.97m, set by Willie Banks in 1985, did then fall to Edwards as he improved it by just 1cm in Salamanca.
Coming into the world championships a few weeks later, Edwards was clearly ready to take gold and possibly improve his own record.
He duly began his competition with a huge first-round jump of 18.16m. The Englishman, and the crowd, celebrated wildly and in some disbelief. However, it was the jump which followed that truly tore up the record books.
Standing on the runway, Edwards’ excitement was clearly visible as, with a smirk and a finger point, he knew something even greater than what he had just achieved was within reach. Then, with a legal +1.3m per second wind at his back, he unleashed a massive jump.
Standing up afterwards with his arms in the air, he knew he had gone further. The result came in and, with a simple smile this time, Edwards acknowledged a barely believable 18.29m that had come up as the commentator roared: ‘Jonathan Edwards has made history again.’
This nervous, humble sportsman – who recalled later ‘buying some sunglasses at the airport in Gothenburg… I just didn’t want the other athletes to see the fear in my eyes’ – had just taken his place among the true all-time greats of athletics.
Re-watching the jump and comparing it to his opening effort, he revealed the feeling he’d had even before he hit the sand, insisting he ‘knew it was better was during the step phase’.
Perhaps they were ideal conditions as Edwards reflected ‘there was a freshness about Gothenburg which you know you can never repeat’, or maybe the perfect placement of his foot on the step as he achieved what had seemed impossible – breaking through both the 18m and then the 60-foot barrier and setting a record still yet to be broken 30 years later.
‘Yes, I thought I would break it again and no, I didn’t think it would last this long,’ Edwards admitted to World Athletics.
Coming close in 2015, Christian Taylor leapt 18.21m in the last round of the Beijing world championships, taking him to second in the history books but still not quite reaching Edwards’ legendary mark.
As Edwards would later tell the BBC: ‘I was in brilliant shape at a world championships in perfect conditions and a crowd right behind me. It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and, when I look back now, I never had another day like that, athletically.’
Records are there to be broken and often are on the track, but sometimes they do stand the test of time, such as Mike Powell’s 1991 long jump of 8.95m.
Some athletes like Usain Bolt, whose 100m and 200m records defined the world of sprinting, and Mondo Duplantis, with multiple pole vault world records seemingly only attainable by himself, appear to have set marks no one can touch.
August 7 marks the 30th anniversary of one of the greatest moments in athletics history.
Although Edwards won Olympic gold in Sydney in 2000 and performed phenomenally throughout his career, nothing will beat that moment in Gothenburg. On that one, perfect day, with a little smile and a roaring crowd, Edwards leapt straight into the history books, where it seems he has every chance of staying for years to come.