Last Updated on November 16, 2012 by Jimson Lee
I was brainstorming with my friend Adarian Barr at Next Level Athletics & Fitness. Like me, he is a Coach and a Masters athlete focusing on Long Jump, Triple Jump, short sprints, and keeps a daily blog on his training.
We were on the subject on technique, and how important it is for every athlete, from Youth to World Class, and somehow mentioned Walter Davis’ name.
In his last round at Indianapolis in 2006, he jumped 17.71 meters, or 57 feet 10.25 inches. And that is into a -0.7 headwind! He already won the competition, but took his last jump anyways. It breaks my heart to watch this video!
The current WR is Jonathan Edwards 18.29 meters, set in Göteborg, 1995 World Championships.
But if you watch the video carefully, you will see his left hand break the sand well before his feet. The mark closest to the board is measured.
Thus this jump could have been over 18 meters or even 60 feet!
In any case, it was a great jump. To this day, this jump is still Walter’s PB.
It was actually his left foot that touched the sand first, and it was a full foot plant. I did a “quick and dirty” analysis of the possible jump length without the foot contact, and it came out to be about 18.20m. This is by no means an exact figure, but I’d put my estimate accurate within 0.06m. However, because he makes a full left foot plant, I suspect that his torso’s impact was significantly lengthened had the foot contact not occurred. The first image shows guidelines used to calculate the 2nd impact distance, and the second image shows the flight trajectory of Davis’ rump for each frame available on the video. Notice that instead of continuing to get steeper as would be expected, the last section his trajectory flattens out (he had not yet touched sand with his rump on the last red dot)- something impossible had he not been pushing off the foot.
@Neal – you are absolutely 100% correct that it was his left foot and not his hand. I has mistaken this jump to a similar jump by fellow countryman Eldrick Floreal… or was it Bruny Surin?
Adarian was quick to correct this post, but he emailed me instead of posting a comment.
In any case, GREAT analysis, and I agree his jump would have been well over 18 meters.
The more i look at it, the more I think that is was his right foot that touches. Do you have a cleaner video?
The reason I say that is because that means that the jump was extended as far as it could be because he would have almost turned sideways in his attempt to get maximum air time. Also with that landing style it would be very hard for his left foot to touch first. Because as you turn sideways you want to kick your feet out to the side away from the direction you are falling.
What is good about the jump is his first two phases, base on that he should have gone much further. I would say his jump phase failed him.
But none the less yes a very great jump.
You can download the original 27Mb file in raw AVI format from:
http://blip.tv/file/get/Fjlee-WalterDavis57Feet1025Inches123.avi
The same video is also linked from the wikipedia page on Davis to http://www.powerpolevaulter.com, and the wikipedia page also incorrectly lists this jump as 17.73m.
In case you’re curious, the reason I can’t be more precise than the 18.14m to 18.26m is in the difficulty of measuring the distance from the mark in the sand to the guidelines. Also, the guide lines should be getting slightly closer together as they move to the right, and their angles should be changing as well (getting closer to horizontal). The effect is almost imperceptible though. In theory, the number of pixels between the 48 and 49 foot mark should be more than the number of pixels between the 55 and 56 foot mark due to slightly different angle from the video camera, but I couldn’t actually find a difference using the Photoshop measurement tool at 500% zoom.
Yes, I was curious about your calculations, but it could be worse, like counting frames on a NTSC or PAL system. Why 29.97 or 25 fps? What can’t they make a video camera filming at EXACTLY 60 fps? (or 600 for that matter)
If you actually look at that jump frame by frame, you can see that it is Walter’s left foot that strikes down in the sand before he lands. This is a common error in LJ/TJ landing. The left foot initial contact allows the jumpers a little more time to push the body pass the center of mass. I do feel this jump could have been slightly further with a patient left side, but I think his predetermined position was still short of 18 meters. I was still an AMAZING jump under the circumstances.
Check it out for yourself
[IMG]http://i11.tinypic.com/7xx2gw1.jpg[/IMG]
Sorry, I guess you can’t do some codes on here… I’ll try these 2…
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=7xx2gw1&s=1
@Jimmy Lee – Great Name!
Thanks for the picture – a great find.
If you want to watch it frame by frame yourself, open or import the .AVI file in Windows Movie Maker. It allows a frame by frame walk through, and allows you to save any particular frame capture, which is part of what I did to find the location of all those red dots in the 2nd picture I posted in my original response.
Another “quick and dirty” slope analysis of the trajectory suggests that Davis gained 7-8 inches onto his 2nd impact location with the foot plant, which puts his potential landing point right at 18.00m without the early foot plant. There is +- 0.12m error in this number.
I have a Math Degree and have done considerable Physics.
Does anyone know if the video is available to be downloaded and used for educational purposes? I am researching the optimal multimedia design for teaching complex human movement and this would be an ideal video for an exemplar.
@George,
I will send you an email. Thanks.