"Higher" is part of the Olympic motto and track & field is one of the biggest sports in the Olympics. And there are plenty of images that immediately come to mind when you think of both track & field and the Olympics. So, with this being Leap Day, it's only fitting that I celebrate some of the greatest leaps in history.
This list isn't just limited to track & field, either. I mentioned it to someone at work today and he gave me a great suggestion--include dunks! Basketball players are pretty high-flying, too, so that definitely works. From Dr. J to Michael Jordan to Vince Carter literally jumping OVER Frederic Weis, there are plenty of examples of basketball players showing off their impressive ups, and they absolutely add some diversity to these rankings. So, let's jump right to it...
10. Michael Jordan: His Airness contributed plenty of memorable moments over his career. The selection could easily have been that ridiculous reverse jam over Patrick Ewing in the playoffs, but it's gotta be his performance in the 1988 Dunk Contest that takes the cake.
9. Javier Sotomayor: He's the only man ever to jump over 8 feet. A couple years ago, Mutaz Essa Barshim and Bohdan Bondarenko both challenged his world record (I was there when they both jumped for it at the Adidas Grand Prix, and it was awesome), but neither has topped Sotomayor yet.
8. Julius Erving: I'm pretty sure the Slam Dunk Contest at the ABA All-Star Game was invented for Julius Erving. It's been 40 years, and that dunk from the free throw line is still remarkable.
7. Jonathan Edwards: Just like Sotomayor is the only person in history to high jump over 8 feet, Edwards is the only person to go over 60 feet in the triple jump. (And he actually did it twice in the same series at the 1995 World Championships.) In the last 30 years, Christian Taylor is the only guy to even come close. Fun fact about Jonathan Edwards: he's now a TV personality in Great Britain, and he hosts the IOC's host city announcements.
6. Yelena Isinbayeva: She's broken the world record so many times that it's hard to pick just one memorable jump. But it's hard to top her winning the World Championship on home soil in Moscow in 2013, even though that wasn't one of her world record-setting jumps.
5. Vince Carter: The Olympic basketball teams made up of NBA stars were beginning to wear thin in 2000, and the U.S. almost lost a couple of times in Sydney. But Carter still produced one of the most indelible images of the Sydney Games when he literally jumped OVER French center Frederic Weis, who had been a lottery pick by the Knicks a year earlier.
4. Dick Fosbury: Before Fosbury came along, people high jumped legs first. Then he went over the bar head first and everything changed. It was revolutionary at the time, but nowadays, you'd be hard-pressed to find a high jumper that doesn't use the "Fosbury Flop."
3. Mike Powell & Carl Lewis: It was one of the most memorable head-to-head duels in track & field history. At the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, the two rivals engaged in a competition for the ages. Lewis, the greatest long jumper ever, had the best six-jump series in history--AND FINISHED SECOND! He jumped further than the existing world record, but it didn't count because it was wind-aided (his best legal jump that night is the No. 3 mark all-time). Instead, it was Powell that set the world record Lewis so badly coveted.
2. Bob Beamon: Powell broke the world record that had been set 23 years earlier at the Mexico City Olympics. Before Bob Beamon came along, no one had ever jumped 28 feet. He went right past that, leaping 29'2 1/2. It's truly one of the most remarkable performances in sports history. From that day on, shattering a world record at the Olympics has been referred to as "Beamonesque."
1. Neil Armstrong: No, this wasn't sports related. It was only one of the most significant events in all of human history. No one summed it up better than the man himself, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
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