Ralph Boston
Long-jump champion who broke the world record six times
RALPH BOSTON, who has died aged 83, was an athlete who broke Jesse Owens’s 25-year-old world long-jump record and became the first man to breach the 27-feet barrier; a triple Olympic medallist, he was warming up for a jump at the 1968 Games in Mexico City when a few yards away his compatriot Bob Beamon took his legendary leap into sporting history, jumping nearly two feet further than any man before him.
“What people don’t know is that I wouldn’t have done that if it hadn’t been for Ralph Boston,” Beamon said 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 take-off. I figured I had better listen to the master, and I did.”
Boston himself apologised to Owens for beating his mark when the two met during the Rome Olympics in 1960, but Owens told him: “I’m just thankful that it stood up this long.”
Ralph Harold Boston was born on May 9 1939 in Laurel, Mississippi, to Peter, a railway fireman-turned farmer, and Eulalia. He was a promising athlete from early on, breaking the national high school record in the 180-yard hurdles.
He studied biochemistry at Tennessee State University, where he competed in all the jumping events, as well as the sprints and high hurdles. But athletics was not his preferred sporting choice: “I wanted to play [American] football, but my mother didn’t like that. In those days, Mama prevailed.”
Set on his way by Eulalia, he won the 1960 Collegiate long jump title, then soon after, at the MT SAC Relays, an athletics event at San Antonio College in California, he jumped 26ft 11in, three inches longer than Jesse Owens had managed in 1935. “Suddenly people recognised me,” Boston recalled.
A fortnight later he travelled to Rome for the Olympics. As the US team was preparing to board the plane for Europe, he was stopped by another competitor, with a camera, who said to him: “Ralph Boston, I want to take your picture.” Picture taken, Boston asked him who he was. “You don’t know me now,” his fellow Olympian replied, “but you will. My name is Cassius Marcellus Clay.”
Boston triumphed in Rome, breaking the Olympic record to take gold, and the following year in California he extended his world record to a history-making 27ft 1/4in. He entered into a rivalry with the Soviet jumper Igor Ter-ovanesyen and broke the record four more times over the next few years – giving him six record marks, more than any other long jumper.
He was tipped to repeat his Olympic victory at the 1964 Games in Tokyo, but the day of the final was wet and windy, affecting everyone’s performance. Then as the unfancied Lynn Davies readied himself for his final effort, the wind miraculously dropped and the Welshman took gold with a jump that was actually shorter than Jesse Owens’s world record 33 years previously. Boston did manage to beat Terovanesyen to the silver medal.
In 1967, when Beamon was suspended for refusing to compete against Brigham Young University, which he accused of having racist policies, Boston stepped in to coach him unofficially. In Mexico City the following year, after seeing his charge win gold and a place in sporting history, Boston took bronze behind the East German Klaus Beer.
Boston – who through his career was also a top-class exponent of the high jump, triple jump and 110m hurdles – retired internationally after the 1968 Olympics, while continuing to compete at home. He went on to work as an administrator at the University of Tennessee and as a television pundit.
Ralph Boston married Geneva Spencer in 1962 but they divorced in 1971, and he is survived by their two sons.