Triple jump, men

What to remember

A hop, a step, then a final jump into the sand: the triple jump links three take-offs after the run-up, landing first on the take-off foot, then on the other. On August 7, 1995, at the World Championships in Gothenburg, Jonathan Edwards stretched that sequence to 18.29 m, with a wind of +1.3 m/s.

The Briton won Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth titles, a full set of the major championships open to a UK athlete. From 1995 to 2002 he had the world's best mark of the year every year except 1997, the year of Cuba's Yoelbi Quesada. Some media nicknamed him "the Seagull", a nod to the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

The event has been on the modern Olympic programme since 1896. In 1911 the record belonged to Dan Ahearn, at 15.52 m. Then come Naoto Tajima (16.00 m in 1936), Viktor Sanyeyev (17.39 m in 1968), João Carlos de Oliveira (17.89 m in 1975) and Willie Banks (17.97 m in 1985). Edwards had already jumped 18.16 m in 1995. Over 84 years the mark grew by 17.8%.