Sport: Walking on Air

At the end of the narrow dirt runway, the pencil-thin Negro poises disjointedly, like a puppet whose strings are loose. Then he prances forward, flapping his skinny arms and kicking his knees almost to his chest. Suddenly, his left foot slams savagely into the take-off board. His eyes bug, his face contorts, and his legs pedal furiously as he springs into trajectory. His left hand claws upward through the air as though searching for something.

Only twelve months ago, Ralph Boston was virtually unknown in the world of sport—except to the college teams that came up against him at Tennessee State University, an obscure, mostly Negro school for which he was virtually a one-man track team. Then, for last summer’s Olympic trials, the lanky (6 ft. 11n., 164 lbs.) athlete from Laurel, Miss.* decided to concentrate on the broad jump. Ever since then, his searching left hand has reached for records, and his power-packed legs have made him the world’s finest broad jumper.

At It to Win. Last week Boston breezed into Warsaw with the traveling U.S. track and field team, hungry for new victories after easy broad jump wins over the Russians, the Germans and the British. Since there were no serious contenders to oppose him in the broad jump, he also offered to substitute for an ailing U.S. teammate in the hop, step and jump—one of the few events in which Boston has never competed seriously. “I don’t know how far I can go,” said he, “but I’ll go at it to win.”

Boston is not only used to winning—but to winning big. Last August, competing with a badly spiked right knee, he broke Jesse Owens’ 25-year-old outdoor broad jumping record of 26 ft., 8¼ in. Then, in rapid succession, he shattered Owens’ 24-year-old Olympic mark, became the first man ever to leap 26 ft. indoors (where the runways are shorter) and the only one to jump 27 ft. outdoors. Fortnight ago, in Moscow, Boston jumped 27 ft, 1¾ in. to set a new world record for the third time in eleven months.

College Family. Son of a boilermaker’s helper who never got past the fourth grade, Boston, now 22, is the youngest of ten children—all of whom went to college. He played baseball at five, quarterbacked his high school football team in Laurel and ran hurdles well enough to earn an athletic scholarship to Tennessee State (which has also turned out such female sprinters as Wilma Rudolph and Lucinda Williams). A straight B student in biochemistry despite his frequent absences, Boston hopes to enter medical school after graduation next January.

Under the watchful eye of Tennessee State’s Track Coach Willie Stevens, Boston plunged last year into a 90-minute-daily practice ritual that included high jumping (to strengthen his legs) and hurdling (to keep his body muscles limber). He patterned his jumping style after that of 1956 Olympic Champion Greg Bell. “The technique I use,” says Boston, “is called ‘walking in the air.’ It is just like running in the air. I take three and a half steps in the air before I land.” He practiced stretching his arms high above his head to force his body up, learned to keep his legs rigid to lengthen his distance and to reach out as far as possible with his feet before landing in the sawdust pit.

Already established as the unmatched master of the broad jump, Boston now is shopping around for a new challenge. A superb all-around athlete (he won five events in the N.A.I.A track and field championships last June), he may try his hand at the grueling decathlon—but he figures that he must first add 20 lbs. to his slender frame. One thing, at any rate, seems sure. Says confident Ralph Boston:’ “One way or another, I’ll be at the Olympics in 1964.”

* Another famous Laurelite: Opera Singer Leontyne Price.