Tuariki Delamere’s Somersault Could Have Launched a New Era in the Olympic Long Jump

Catch it live: The Men's Long Jump Final at the Paris Olympics will be held on Tuesday, August 6, at 2:20 pm ET. The Women's Final is on Thursday, August 8, at 2 pm ET. Whether an athlete wins gold or silver at the Summer Olympics can turn on the tiniest of margins, so competitors are always looking for an edge. It could be a tight-fitting outfit to reduce air drag or a novel technique like the Fosbury flop for the high jump—which everyone uses today. In 1974, it looked like Tuariki Delamere was going to revolutionize the long jump by doing a somersault in midair. It seemed crazy, but he analyzed the idea with a biomechanics professor at his school, and they agreed: It was a more efficient way to jump. It also looked cool as hell . Sadly, the sport's governing body stepped in and banned the technique before the 1975 Olympics. Delamere never got his chance. Why would incorporating a front flip in your jump give you a leg up (so to speak) on the competition? It's all in the physics. Let's investigate, shall we? A Ball Model for the Long Jump People are complicated, and jumping people are more complicated. One trick that physicists use is to start by simplifying, as a way to get at the fundamental forces in play. So let's imagine a jumper who is a ball. (Yes, like in the old spherical cow joke.) You can't get simpler than that! They'll still have the mass and speed of a human, but with a shape that eliminates gangly limbs. Don't ask me how they run and jump—it just happens. So here is my spherical long jumper: The ball “runs” to the left with a velocity v 1 . In order to jump, the velocity needs to change so that it has an upward component. (Remember, velocity is not just speed; it also has a specific direction, as shown by the red arrows above.)