Triple Jump

The triple jump, not surprisingly, has three jumps. The awkward part is the first jump.

The three jumps all have names:

1. Hop: The jumper takes off after a short run. The jumper has to launch from one foot, and also has to land on that same foot (we’ll assume the right foot for this example). This is the part that seems a little awkward to viewers, because we don’t normally land on the same foot we jump with.

2. Bound: This is a more normal jump. Since the jumper took off with the right and landed with the right (again – this is the weird part), they again take off with the right foot (it’s the only one in contact with the ground at this point), but land with the left. This seems more normal to the viewer – we take off with one foot and land with the other.

3. Jump: The final jump is basically just a long jump. The jumper has landed on the left foot and them jumps as far as they can, landing in the sand with both feet.

For all three jumps, the jumper is only launching from one foot. In our example, the jumper would launch from right, right, left, then land with both feet.

Here is the current world record, which has stood for 29 years.

It’s helpfully in slow-motion.

1. The jumper launches from his left foot at 0:08
2. He lands on and launches again from his left foot at 0:09
3. He lands on and launches again from his right foot at 0:10

(If you want to go really slow, you can pause the video, then press the “period” key to move through it frame-by-frame.)

What gets visually confusing is that during the first jump (the “hop”) the “off” leg rotates in the air – so it almost looks like he’s landing on then launching from the opposite leg, except that it never touches the ground. It just “cycles” in the air.

You’ll also notice in the video above that when he embarks on the final jump into the sand pit, he’s quite far back from the edge of the pit, and there’s no line showing where he should jump from. This is because the foul line is way back at the start, where he went into the first jump. Where he takes off from the last jump is purely a function of how far he gets in the first two. The measured distance is from the foul line to where he landed – the edge of the pit is of no consequence.

(Purely theoretically, the first or second jump could launch him into the pit itself, forcing him to jump from the sand, but this is impossible in a practical sense.)

The world record jumper (from the video) is Jonathan Edwards from the U.K. He set that record at the 1995 World Championships. He won silver at the 1996 Olympics and gold at the 2000 Olympics.

It is the third-oldest track-and-field record still standing.

Why I Looked It Up

I just always wondered. I saw a video meme of the world record jump, and decided to figure out why it has always looked so weird.