Carl Lewis against his main rival of the last few years, Mike Powell, the silver medalist in the event from the 1988 Olympics and the top-ranked long jumper of 1990. Lewis had at that point not lost a long jump competition in a decade, winning the 65 consecutive meets in which he competed. Powell had been unable to defeat Lewis, despite sometimes putting in jumps near world-record territory, only to see them ruled fouls or, as with other competitors such as Larry Myricks, putting in leaps that Lewis himself had only rarely surpassed, only to see Lewis surpass them on his next
Barrel jumping part of ABC's Wide World of Sports starting in the 1960s. Following the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, double Olympic speed skating gold medalist Irving Jaffee, took a job as Winter Sports Director at the Borscht Belt entertainment mecca Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel. One of his innovations was to hold the World Barrel Jumping Championships. When his friend Roone Arledge began producing Wide World of Sports, it became a staple, first broadcast on January 14, 1962. It turned out to be a natural made for TV event years before Evel Knievel would gain attention for distance jumping objects like