Leap of Faith

Leap of Faith
Once Sundays were no longer sacrosanct, England's Jonathan Edwards exploded into the greatest triple jumper in history
by Tim Layden

In this composite culled from six training jumps, Edwards hops, skips and jumps a total of 53'5". To follow his progress from takeoff board to sandpit, click through the nine sections of this article.
You'll need Netscape 2.0 or higher to view the animated sequences in these pages.
sequential photographs by Heinz Kluetmeier

His moment is replayed on a billboard-sized video screen at the front of a sweeping hall in London's Park Lane Hotel: A pale, slender man in blue singlet and shorts, his dark hair flecked with gray, sprints the length of a narrow red path, jumps into the air, skips twice along the ground like an oversized child in a frantic game of hopscotch and lands softly in deep sand. The announcer brays as the hall fills with music and then with loud applause. On the screen the man leaps from the sand and runs about in mad celebration. And at a round table near the front of the hall, Jonathan Edwards smiles and thinks what he always thinks: It seems like somebody else up there on the screen.

The occasion is a mid-December luncheon celebrating the Daily Express Sports Awards, at which Edwards will be named British Sportsman of the Year. But his emotions were scarcely different on the clear, cool evening last August in Göteborg, Sweden, when he shook the World Track and Field Championships by twice breaking his own triple jump world record and by becoming the first man to break the 18-meter (59'3/4") and 60-foot barriers. After his second record jump (60'1/4") Edwards stood in a swarm of photographers as Ullevi Stadium quivered in appreciation, and he thought, This is crazy. Athletes just don't do this kind of thing. At least I don't do this kind of thing.