Standing long jump put spring into star striker
Explosive power that earned five-year-old Haaland a world record catapulted prodigious scorer to football’s heights
It is the thighs you notice most about Erling Haaland. To describe them as bulging would be to do them a disservice: rather, they are so honed, they seem in danger of bursting out of his skin.
All footballers are toned, of course, but Haaland’s quads now seem to belong to that elite category of player body part alongside the Ronaldo abs, the Grealish calves and the Hazard backside – not just impressive in their own right, but an active weapon which helps explain their success.
Those muscles are responsible for the explosive acceleration which regularly takes him clear of panicking defenders, but they are not a new creation. In fact, their genesis can be traced to when Haaland was five, just before he joined the academy of his local Norwegian football club, Bryne, and broke a world record in the standing long jump.
Keen to help their son harness his physical abilities, Haaland’s parents – Alf-inge, the former Manchester City midfielder, and mother Gry Marita, a former national heptathlete – determined the best way was to allow him to flourish in a range of sports.
“It was before he started playing football,” Alf-inge told Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. “We used to take him to athletics so he could test himself. Erling enjoyed handball, athletics and crosscountry skiing until he turned 14.”
The unlikely setting of the longjump pit provided Haaland the opportunity to cement a littleknown legacy that stands to this day. On Jan 22, 2006, Haaland – courtesy of those thighs – leapt 1.63 metres in the standing long jump, setting an unofficial world record for a five-year-old. Why he was competing in the event is another story.
Contested as an Olympic discipline four times from 1900 and 1912, it helped produce one of the most successful Olympians in history in America’s Ray Ewry, who was the undisputed standing athletics king, winning eight gold medals in the standing long jump, standing high jump and standing triple jump. Strangely, it is in Haaland’s homeland of Norway that standing athletics events have the richest heritage. The standing long jump and standing high jump continue to form part of the Norwegian Indoor Athletics Championships.
The golden age – yes, there was one – of the standing long jump in Norway was in the 1960s and 1970s, when the best regularly broke 3.50m, and Arne Tvervaag’s mark of 3.71m, set in 1968, remained as an unofficial world record until American footballer Byron Jones jumped 3.73m at the 2015 NFL Combine. Standing an imposing 6ft 4in, and known for his strength and power on the football pitch, it is Haaland’s remarkable explosiveness – rather than the speed that brought him some success as a sprinter during his childhood – which best explains his ability to jump so far as a fiveyear-old.
While 2012 Olympic long-jump finalist turned American footballer Marquise Goodwin has a best in the standing long jump of 3.35m, those who go further rely less on their ability to transfer speed than on harnessing power through explosiveness. Kenneth Bjorvatn, Norway’s standing long jump champion, said: “If Erling Haaland tried it today, he could probably get to Norwegian level. It’s about explosivity, power and flexibility, and he has all of that.” When combined with his huge physique and express pace, Haaland has all the physical attributes required of an elite football striker. “There are several similarities between being good at sprinting and long jumping,” said Alf-inge. “Both use similar muscle groups. That can give you an advantage on the football field.”
Now one of the bestpaid footballers on the planet, it is unlikely Haaland thinks much about the standing long jump career he never had. But he still has that record as a five-year-old.