Mutiny in the world of long jump: “I feel like we are in perfect harmony”

The criticism is not entirely new, but it erupted again during a toilet session in Budapest.

A protest list launched by the Jumpers World Instagram account has, at the time of writing, Sunday morning, collected more than 2,500 signatures. The requirement is to change the overtaking rule in the long jump.

The background is that evaluating wood strikes, previously an official’s job, was replaced by video and laser review two years ago.

“You must count in centimeters.”

The new technology measures the plank strike in terms of where “the foot stops making contact with the plank.” In practical terms, this means that a jump where the foot is first flat on the right side of the plank can still be judged as an overrun, because the toes are “rolling” on the line during the jump.

– This means that the jumper usually has to subtract one centimeter from the permissible part of the plank, because the toes always roll to some extent, depending on the jumping technique and the shoe, says Yannick Tregaro, one of the critics.

Risk of injury from a more slippery plank

Do you feel like you’re getting a hearing from the IAAF?

– I wrote about this for World Athletics after the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Belgrade 2022. But no, nothing was heard. But we are already over a thousand who have signed this petition, and I hope it carries a little more weight.

New technology has also made the plank more slippery — and potentially dangerous — to walk on. Something of which there were examples during the World Cup and before.

The reason is that the overflow part, which was previously a few centimeters high and marked with plastic, a kind of rough clay-like material on which the foot makes an impression when overtaking, has been removed.

-It’s dangerous and could end badly. Just look at what happened to Fredrik Samuelsson at SM. I think the solution is to make the top a little higher again,” says Yannick Tregaro.