SAINT-DENIS – From Jesse Owens to Bob Beamon to Carl Lewis and plenty more, Americans have ruled the men’s long jump throughout the history of the Summer Olympics, but there was no one from the United States in that event’s final on Tuesday night.
Here’s how unusual that is: The only previous instance of a shutout for the country in a non-boycotted Olympics came in 2008. Otherwise, not only has the U.S. always had at least one participant in the final, but it’s dominated the event, winning the gold about 75% of the time.
Lewis alone won four consecutive gold medals in the long jump — at Los Angeles in 1984, Seoul in 1988, Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996. Look at the bigger picture, and Americans claimed 22 of the 29 gold medals at past Olympics; Britain is the only other nation to even have won two.
There were Olympic titles for American male long jumpers at 13 of the first 14 Games, including Owens at Berlin in 1936.
Beamon still holds the Olympic record, which he set while earning the gold medal at Mexico City in 1968. American Mike Powell, set the world record in 1991, and took the silver behind Lewis as part of a podium sweep at the Games the following year.
This time, though, there would be no one representing the red-white-and-blue taking the run-up along the purple track and leaping into the sand pit.
None of the three entrants from the U.S. — Jeremiah Davis, who won the country’s Olympic trials in June, Malcolm Clemons or Jarrion Lawson — made it through qualifying on Sunday. Lawson scratched on all three of his jumps, while Davis and Clemons didn’t go far enough.
Lewis weighed in via social medial, responding to a post asking him to address the failure to put any American in the final by putting up a GIF with the caption: “I don’t know what to say.”
The eight finalists are from China, Jamaica, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Colombia, Britain and Croatia.
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