Bob Beamon - Olympic Gold Medalist

April 15, 1995

Three greats enter Track Hall

Derry Eads
El Paso Times
Assistant Sports Editor

Bob Beamon might still own the world long jump record had it not been for one crucial mistake on Oct. 18, 1968, in Mexico City.

Instead of landing on his feet in the pit 26 years ago, the former UTEP athlete fell backwards on his buttocks.

Officials took 30 minutes to measure the distance from the board on the runway to where his buttocks blasted out the sand. The Olympic Games’ gold-medal winning jump of 29-2 ½ would survive as the world record until Aug. 30, 1991, when Mike Powell leaped two inches further.

“I lost four percent of the jump because of my mistake,” Beamon said Friday at a press conference at UTEP’s Alumni Hall.

Beamon, 1984 Olympic women’s high hurdles bronze medalist Kim Turner-McKenzie and two-time NCAA champion Fred DeBernardi were inducted into the UTEP Track Hall of Fame at a banquet Friday night at the Cliff Inn.

Beamon was UTEP’s first NCAA individual champion, winning the long jump and triple jump at the 1968 indoor championships in Detroit. Two months later, the sophomore and several teammates were dismissed from the UTEP team for refusing to compete against Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

The 49-year-old athlete remembered only the good times Friday.

Like the time he was close to a dream of playing basketball for UTEP. Beamon and UTEP coach Don Haskins had discussed the possibility. Haskins had let athletes from other sports – Fred Carr (football), Charlie West (baseball and football) – play basketball.

“We had a deal that I would probably play for UTEP,” Beamon said.

How good was Beamon in basketball? UTEP sports information director Eddie Mullens still remembers the time when Beamon nearly had both elbows above the rim on one jump.

Beamon, who now works in Miami’s parks and recreation department, has one piece of advice for young athletes:

“Stay focused,” he said. “It only takes one-tenth of a second to lose it all. That was my problem the year before the 1968 Olympics. I’d lose my concentration for a tenth of a second.”

Turner, a seven-time All American and 1984 NCAA hurdles champion, credited former UTEP assistant coach Dan Pfaff with her success.

Pfaff, current assistant at LSU, kept McKenzie loose throughout the major championship meets.

“He told me to relax,” McKenzie said.

Comments

[Angry Johnny]

Trish, I love this blog, but I do need to point out one small error. Derry Eads didn't work for the Times; he was the assistant sports editor for the El Paso Herald-Post.

[Trish Long]

Thanks Johnny. As you probably know the Times and the Herald Post were in the same building for a long time. We have some HP articles mixed in our clip files and I am sure the same is true for the HP files. Most of the articles are stamped either El Paso Times or Herald Post. This one wasn't.