The men's

long jump The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a takeoff point. Along with the triple jump, the two events that measure jumping for distance as a gr ...

field event at the 1960 Olympic Games took place on September 2. Forty-nine athletes from 34 nations competed. The maximum number of athletes per nation had been set at 3 since the 1930 Olympic Congress. The event was won by 1 cm by

Ralph Boston Ralph Harold Boston (May 9, 1939 – April 30, 2023) was an American track athlete who received three Olympic medals and became the first person to break the barrier in the long jump. Early years and education Boston was born in Laurel, Missi ...

of the United States, the nation's eighth consecutive and 13th overall victory in the men's long jump.

Igor Ter-Ovanesyan Igor Aramovich Ter-Ovanesyan (, ; born 19 May 1938) is a Soviet and Ukrainian former long jumper and coach, of Armenian descent. Competing for the Soviet Union, he was a five-time European and two-time Olympic medalist in this event. In 1985, h ...

's bronze was the Soviet Union's first medal in the event.

Background

This was the 14th appearance of the event, which is one of 12 athletics events to have been held at every Summer Olympics. The returning finalists from the 1956 Games were bronze medalist Jorma Valkama of Finland, fourth-place finisher Dmitriy Bondarenko of the Soviet Union, sixth-place finisher Kazimierz Kropidłowski of Poland, twelfth-place finisher Fermín Donazar of Uruguay, and

of the Soviet Union, who had fouled in all three attempts in the 1956 final.

of the United States was favored; the month before the Games he had broken the 25-year-old world record set by

Jesse Owens James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who made history at the Athletics at the 1936 Summer Olympics, 1936 Olympic Games by becoming the first person to win four gold meda ...

. Ter-Ovanesyan, the 1958 European champion, was his biggest challenger. The British West Indies, Egypt, Iraq, Malaya, and New Zealand each made their first appearance in the event; Germany competed as the "United Team of Germany" for the first time. The United States appeared for the 14th time, the only nation to have long jumpers at each of the Games thus far.

Competition format

The 1960 competition used the two-round format with divided final introduced in 1952. The qualifying round gave each competitor three jumps to achieve a distance of 7.40 metres; if fewer than 12 men did so, the top 12 (including all those tied) would advance. The final provided each jumper with three jumps; the top six jumpers received an additional three jumps for a total of six, with the best to count (qualifying round jumps were not considered for the final).Official Report, p. 328.

Records

Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were as follows.

broke the Olympic record with an 8.12 metre jump on his third attempt in the final. In his last jump, Bo Roberson also surpassed the old Olympic record but did not quite reach Boston's new record, jumping 8.11 metres.

Schedule

All times are

Central European Time Central European Time (CET) is a standard time of Central, and parts of Western Europe, which is one hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The UTC offset, time offset from UTC can be written as UTC+01:00. It is used in most parts of Eur ...

(

UTC+1 +01:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +01:00. In ISO 8601, the associated time would be written as 2019-02-07T23:28:34+01:00. This time is used in: *Central European Time * West Africa Time * Western European Summer Time **Brit ...

)

Results

All jumpers reaching 7.40 metres advanced to the finals. All distances are listen in metres.

Qualifying

Final

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Athletics at the 1960 Summer Olympics - Men's long jump M Long jump at the Olympics Men's events at the 1960 Summer Olympics