• Home
  • Politics
  • Health
  • World
  • Business
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • More
    • Sports
    • Entertainment
    • Lifestyle
What's Hot

How Smart Mattresses Improve Sleep Quality For Couples

May 9, 2025

OpenAI CEO Warns: ‘Not A Huge Amount Of Time’ Until China Overpowers American AI

May 9, 2025

Short and Funny Sayings for a Happy Summer with Friends

May 9, 2025
Facebook Twitter Instagram
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
Friday, May 9
Patriot Now NewsPatriot Now News
  • Home
  • Politics

    Security video shows brazen sexual assault of California woman by homeless man

    October 24, 2023

    Woman makes disturbing discovery after her boyfriend chases away home intruder who stabbed him

    October 24, 2023

    Poll finds Americans overwhelmingly support Israel’s war on Hamas, but younger Americans defend Hamas

    October 24, 2023

    Off-duty pilot charged with 83 counts of attempted murder after allegedly trying to shut off engines midflight on Alaska Airlines

    October 23, 2023

    Leaked audio of Shelia Jackson Lee abusively cursing staffer

    October 22, 2023
  • Health

    Disparities In Cataract Care Are A Sorry Sight

    October 16, 2023

    Vaccine Stocks—Including Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech And Novavax—Slide Amid Plummeting Demand

    October 16, 2023

    Long-term steroid use should be a last resort

    October 16, 2023

    Rite Aid Files For Bankruptcy With More ‘Underperforming Stores’ To Close

    October 16, 2023

    Who’s Still Dying From Complications Related To Covid-19?

    October 16, 2023
  • World

    New York Democrat Dan Goldman Accuses ‘Conservatives in the South’ of Holding Rallies with ‘Swastikas’

    October 13, 2023

    IDF Ret. Major General Describes Rushing to Save Son, Granddaughter During Hamas Invasion

    October 13, 2023

    Black Lives Matter Group Deletes Tweet Showing Support for Hamas 

    October 13, 2023

    AOC Denounces NYC Rally Cheering Hamas Terrorism: ‘Unacceptable’

    October 13, 2023

    L.A. Prosecutors Call Out Soros-Backed Gascón for Silence on Israel

    October 13, 2023
  • Business

    OpenAI CEO Warns: ‘Not A Huge Amount Of Time’ Until China Overpowers American AI

    May 9, 2025

    Trump Announces First Post-Tariff Trade Deal

    May 8, 2025

    Electric Vehicle Sales Nosedive As GOP Takes Buzzsaw To Biden’s Mandate

    May 7, 2025

    Tyson Foods Announces It Will Bend The Knee To Trump Admin’s New Rules

    May 7, 2025

    Federal Reserve Holds Interest Rates Steady Despite Pressure From Trump

    May 7, 2025
  • Finance

    Ending China’s De Minimis Exception Brings 3 Benefits for Americans

    April 17, 2025

    The Trump Tariff Shock Should Push Indonesia to Reform Its Economy

    April 17, 2025

    Tariff Talks an Opportunity to Reinvigorate the Japan-US Alliance

    April 17, 2025

    How China’s Companies Are Responding to the US Trade War

    April 16, 2025

    The US Flip-flop Over H20 Chip Restrictions 

    April 16, 2025
  • Tech

    Cruz Confronts Zuckerberg on Pointless Warning for Child Porn Searches

    February 2, 2024

    FTX Abandons Plans to Relaunch Crypto Exchange, Commits to Full Repayment of Customers and Creditors

    February 2, 2024

    Elon Musk Proposes Tesla Reincorporates in Texas After Delaware Judge Voids Pay Package

    February 2, 2024

    Tesla’s Elon Musk Tops Disney’s Bob Iger as Most Overrated Chief Executive

    February 2, 2024

    Mark Zuckerberg’s Wealth Grew $84 Billion in 2023 as Pedophiles Target Children on Facebook, Instagram

    February 2, 2024
  • More
    • Sports
    • Entertainment
    • Lifestyle
Patriot Now NewsPatriot Now News
Home»Sports»Ralph Boston, Who Leaped 27 Feet and Landed in History, Dies at 83
Sports

Ralph Boston, Who Leaped 27 Feet and Landed in History, Dies at 83

May 2, 2023No Comments5 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Ralph Boston, Who Leaped 27 Feet and Landed in History, Dies at 83
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

Ralph Boston, the Olympic long jump champion who, in August 1960, broke the track star Jesse Owens’s 25-year-old world record in the event, and a year later became the first jumper to break the 27-foot mark, died on Sunday at his home in Peachtree City, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. He was 83.

The cause was complications of a stroke, his son Todd said.

Boston dominated the long jump through much of the 1960s by breaking or tying world records six more times over that span. A tall and sinewy Mississippian, he won a gold medal in the Rome Olympics in 1960, a silver medal in Tokyo in 1964 and a bronze in Mexico City in 1968.

Boston won the N.C.A.A. long jump title in 1960, when he was an emerging athlete at Tennessee State University (then known as the Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State University). In August, he burst onto the national scene at a conditioning meet in Los Angeles that served as a final tuneup before the Rome Olympics.

The U.S. track team broke four world records in that event, but it was Boston’s long jump — of 26 feet, 11 inches — that made the biggest headlines. The jump surpassed Owens’s best, the previous world record, by three inches.

“Jesse said it was all right to break it — he’s tired of it,” Boston told reporters that day. He had not actually spoken to Owens and eventually apologized to him when they met at the Rome Olympics. Owens was gracious.

“I’m happy to see the record broken, and I’m just thankful that it stood up this long,” he told The Associated Press.

See also  Suzanne Somers, Star of ‘Three’s Company,’ Dies at 76

Boston then broke the Olympic record (26 foot 7½ inches) to win the gold medal in Rome. But his world-record performance in Los Angeles had already made him a star.

He soared into history again in 1961 when he broke the 27-foot barrier — with a 27-foot-½-inch jump at the Modesto Relays in California (now known as the California Invitational Relays). His personal best was a leap of 27 feet 5 inches at Modesto in 1965.

Three years later, in Mexico City, Boston, on his way to winning a bronze Olympic medal there, was warming up for a jump when his teammate Bob Beamon leaped an astonishing 29 feet, 2½ inches, shattering Boston’s world record by nearly two feet. (The current record — 29 feet, 4¼ inches — was set by the American Mike Powell in 1991.)

Boston often recalled an encounter he had with a fellow Olympian on a New York City street as the U.S. team was preparing to leave for Rome in 1960.

“He’s got a camera and he says, ‘Ralph Boston, I want to take your picture,’ and he snaps it,” Boston told The Los Angeles Times in 2010. “I said, ‘Who are you?’ And he said, ‘You don’t know me now, but you will. My name is Cassius Marcellus Clay.’”

Ralph Harold Boston was born on May 9, 1939, in Laurel, Miss., about 85 miles southeast of Jackson, to Peter and Eulalia Boston. His mother was a homemaker, his father a railroad fireman who took up farming after losing his right eye in a hunting accident. Ralph, the youngest of 10 children, helped his father in the fields before school.

See also  Ex-Northwestern Players Hire Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump, Chicago Law Firm in Hazing Case

At Oak Park High School in Laurel, he became a star athlete, setting a national high school record in the 180-yard hurdles. As a biochemistry major at Tennessee State University, he competed in the high jump, sprints, high hurdles and triple jump, along with the long jump.

“I became a long jumper by accident,” he said in an interview in 2015 with a local Mississippi television station. “I wanted to play football, but my mother didn’t like that. In those days, Mama prevailed.”

During the 1960s, he had an intense but friendly rivalry with the Soviet Union’s long jumper Igor Ter-Ovanesyan. At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Boston was a favorite to repeat as the gold medalist, but the steady rain and strong winds that affected his jumps led to an unexpected upset.

Lynn Davies of Britain, a relative unknown, stood at the end of the runway and waited for the wind to die down for his final jump. When the wind momentarily calmed, he jumped to first place with a distance of 26 feet 5½ inches.

Until then, Ter-Ovanesyan, who had never beaten Boston in an outdoor meet, was ahead going into that fifth and final jump. But when Davies took the lead, “Boston shrugged his shoulders and turned to Ter-Ovanesyan,” The Times reported. “‘There goes the gold medal,’ Boston said.”

He managed to overcome his Soviet rival and take the silver medal with his final jump.

Boston married Geneva Jackson Spencer in 1962. The couple had two sons, Todd and Stephen, before the marriage ended in divorce in 1971. In addition to his sons, he is survived by two sisters, Eugenia Angel and Bettye Beverly; a brother, Charles; three grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

See also  Inside the NBA’s Version of Comic-Con

Boston retired after the 1968 Olympics and served as coordinator of minority affairs and assistant dean of students at the University of Tennessee from 1968 to 1975. He covered track and field for CBS Sports as well as ESPN. Boston was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974 and into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1985. He became a corporate executive, eventually joining ServiceMaster Services, a cleaning company, in Stone Mountain, Ga., as president and chief executive.

Boston was also known as a generous mentor and coach to fellow athletes. Beamon credited Boston for making Beamon’s s record-breaking jump in Mexico City possible.

“What people don’t know is that I wouldn’t have done that if it hadn’t been for Ralph Boston,” he told the news website Mississippi Today in 2021. “I fouled on my first two attempts and was about to get disqualified, and then Ralph told me I needed to adjust my footwork leading to my takeoff. I figured I had better listen to the master, and I did.”

Ashley Shannon Wu contributed reporting.

Boston Dies Feet history Landed Leaped Ralph
Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email

Related Posts

9 Best Foot Massagers to Soothe Achy, Tired Feet At Home

January 18, 2025

Nobel Prize-Winning Research Highlights Cambodia’s History of Extractive Institutions

October 28, 2024

Leaders Of Union That Threatened To Shut Down Economy Have History Of Splurging On Luxury Restaurants, Resorts

October 4, 2024

Wally Amos, Founder Of Popular Cookie Brand ‘Famous Amos’ Dies At 88

August 15, 2024
Add A Comment

Leave A Reply Cancel Reply

Top Posts

Sam Bankman-Fried enlists Harvard Law’s Tribe to stay out of jail

August 2, 2023

Scalise, Jordan Announce Bids To Replace McCarthy As Speaker Of The House

October 5, 2023

U.S. shutdown relief vs mixed China PMIs

October 1, 2023

Fani Willis Just Ripped Jim Jordan

September 7, 2023
Don't Miss

How Smart Mattresses Improve Sleep Quality For Couples

Lifestyle May 9, 2025

Sharing a bed with your partner can be romantic… until it’s not. One of you…

OpenAI CEO Warns: ‘Not A Huge Amount Of Time’ Until China Overpowers American AI

May 9, 2025

Short and Funny Sayings for a Happy Summer with Friends

May 9, 2025

Trump Announces First Post-Tariff Trade Deal

May 8, 2025
About
About

This is your World, Tech, Health, Entertainment and Sports website. We provide the latest breaking news straight from the News industry.

We're social. Connect with us:

Facebook Twitter Instagram Pinterest
Categories
  • Business (4,111)
  • Entertainment (4,220)
  • Finance (3,202)
  • Health (1,938)
  • Lifestyle (1,628)
  • Politics (3,084)
  • Sports (4,036)
  • Tech (2,006)
  • Uncategorized (4)
  • World (3,944)
Our Picks

Hillary Clinton makes admission about Biden’s age that Democrats would rather ignore: ‘Every right to consider it’

May 23, 2023

Trump Slams Civil Lawsuit After Judge Issues Gag Order on Ex-president

October 4, 2023

Deranged Trump Claims Hamas Terrorists Are Coming Over The Border And Blames Obama

October 9, 2023
Popular Posts

How Smart Mattresses Improve Sleep Quality For Couples

May 9, 2025

OpenAI CEO Warns: ‘Not A Huge Amount Of Time’ Until China Overpowers American AI

May 9, 2025

Short and Funny Sayings for a Happy Summer with Friends

May 9, 2025
© 2025 Patriotnownews.com - All rights reserved.
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.