I’ve had the luxury of being to several Prefontaine Classic meets and it’s always one of my favorite meets of the year. The crowd is always super well educated and gets in to every single event. I didn’t go to this year’s competition but it seems to be one of the better renditions of this annual classic. The long jump was perhaps the best competition of all with Dwight Phillips and Irving Saladino battling it out again, with both turning in monster jumps. In fact, I’d imagine that Dwight’s long jump series was probably one of the better in history with 3 legal jumps (plus 2 passes and a foul) at an average of 8.60m and all three attempts occurring with a recorded head wind. Saladino wasn’t too shabby either but it’s gotta be kind of frustrating to jump over 28 feet and come in 2nd. His Prefontaine performance was one of only 10 performances where an athlete jumped over 28 feet and took 2nd (with Carl Lewis being the only guy to jump over 29 feet TWICE in one competition and take 2nd).
29-2¾/8.91w Carl Lewis ’91 WC (and 29-1¼/8.87 legal in same meet)
28-8¼/8.74 Larry Myricks ’88 OT
28-4¼/8.64 Mike Powell ’92 OG
28-3¾/8.63 Larry Myricks ’87 USATF
28-3¾/8.63 Mike Powell ’91 USATF
28-3¾/8.63 Irving Saladino ’09 Pre
28-1/8.56 Yago Lamela ’99 WIC
28-¼/8.54 Dwight Phillips ’09 Hengelo
28-0/8.53 Robert Emmiyan ’87 WC
28-0/8.53 Carl Lewis ’92 OT
It’s actually funny looking over that list how much of an impact Lewis had on the event. Myricks and Powell were legends in their own right and if they had been around 10 years before or after they would likely have chalked up as many victories as King Carl…but when Lewis was jumping you could pretty much assume you were jumping for second place.
If you missed the meet, you can catch the web stream of it here.
Stats from TFN.