Approaching lightspeed
It's not that I'm not looking forward to the beginning of the Premier League. But if I had to pick just one sporting event to watch this weekend, it would be the men's 100m final at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin on Sunday. The football's great and all, but it's just beginning, and it's not going to blow any minds. Well, Andrey Arshavin might. But you get my point.
In honour of one potentially mind-blowing track & field occasion, here, thanks to the blessed soul who posted it on YouTube, is the ultimate brain-shatterer. The Guardian's blog correctly called the 1991 long jump final "the greatest moment in World Championships history". It's even more than that: it is one of the greatest sporting contests of all time. The jumpers are Carl Lewis and Mike Powell, and if this doesn't stir your sports-loving soul ... well, it's been nice knowing you.
Some small points:
* Few long-jumpers ever manage to get close to these distances. I'm not particularly fond of Lewis, but for him to make four 8.80m-plus jumps in one final is astonishing. Hey, for Powell, or anyone, to make that jump just once is astonishing.
* If you're as thrown by seeing athletics measurements in imperial form as I am (was it some retro thing?), the metric numbers are here.
* For a 6-2 non-basketball player, Powell could really dunk.
* Not to oversell it to those of you who may not have seen it, but: This. Is. Fucking. Glorious.
Below (even though it says "part 2") is the first part. Thanks to the pain-in-the-arse YouTube "embedding disabled" feature, you'll have to go here for the second part (the really good one). The final part is here.
