Brazilian triple jumper Joao Carlos de Oliveira (© Getty Images)
As Joao Carlos de Oliveira tore down the triple jump runway alongside the back straight of the Estadio Olimpico Universitario for the second time on the Wednesday afternoon of 15 October 1975, vivid memories sprang to mind of a sporting icon from his homeland doing famously likewise in the same city five years earlier.
It was on the far side of Mexico City’s Azteka Stadium that Carlos Alberto steamed on to Pele’s nonchalantly rolled pass to smash home the wonder goal that clinched victory in the World Cup final for the wondrous Brazilian football side of 1970.
Brazil’s tall, athletic right back and captain wore the canary yellow number four shirt that day, lifting the Jules Rimet Trophy in the wake of a 4-1 victory over Italy.
A 21-year-old army corporal, the lithe, long-legged De Oliveira was barely known outside his native state of Sao Paulo before he charged down the Mexican runway, the number 42 pinned to his yellow Brazilian team vest, for his second-round effort in the men’s triple jump competition at the 1975 Pan American Games.
What followed was a quantum hop, step and leap reminiscent of another historic sporting moment in the same city – in the same arena, on the same strip, in fact – at the Olympic Games of 1968.
As Athletics Weekly reported under the headline ‘Brazilian bombshell in triple jump’: “Producing a performance that can only be compared with Bob Beamon’s defining 8.90m long jump in the same stadium seven years ago, De Oliveira bounded to the incredible distance of 17.89m.”
In windless conditions, at an altitude of 2,248m, the unheralded Brazilian cut through the thin air of the Mexican capital to what remains today the greatest single improvement in the history of men’s triple jumping – almost half a metre beyond the world record figures of 17.44m set by the Georgian-Soviet giant of the event, Viktor Saneyev, in 1972.
It was also a staggering 1.15m farther than the lifetime best 16.74m that de Oliveira had achieved in Rio de Janeiro only one month earlier. On that occasion, he had been eclipsed by his mentor and elder by 10 years, the 31-year-old Nelson Prudencio.
Having jumped 16.93m in Rio, Prudencio headed to Mexico with ambitions of reclaiming the world record he held for all of five minutes during the dizzying Olympic competition of 1968, in which four global marks were made in the final, plus one in qualifying, before Saneyev snatched gold with a last-gasp 17.39m.
The silver medallist then and bronze medallist at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Prudencio was merely a stunned bystander in the Pan Am contest of 1975, finishing fourth with 16.85m behind his soaring team-mate and the US duo Tommy Haynes, who was second with a national record of 17.20m, and Milan Tiff, third with 16.98m.
Master technician
The silken smoothness of De Oliveira’s technique that day remains glaringly evident 50 years on.
What the grainy YouTube footage doesn’t quite capture is the speed at which his supremely-measured effort – a 6.08m hop, 5.37m step and 6.44m jump – was executed.
“I was travelling at 900km per hour,” Prudencio remarked. “Joao Carlos was travelling at the speed of light.”
As Andy Benns and Lawrence Harvey noted in their definitive tome Triple Jump Trailblazers, “Prudencio was a remarkably fast sprinter.” De Oliveira was even quicker, clocking a 100m PB of 10.1.
He was very much in the same mould as Jonathan Edwards, who took the men’s triple jump into a new dimension with his 18.29m world record, but the swift, featherlight Briton had a 100m best of ‘only’ 10.48.
Edwards’ performance at the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg has stood unchallenged for three decades now. De Oliveria’s lasted almost 10 years, until Willie Banks bounded out to 17.97m at the US Championships in Indianapolis in May 1987.
Banks became known as ‘the Bouncing Barrister’. De Oliveira was christened ‘Joao do Pulo’ (Jumping John) after returning home from Mexico as a national hero in 1975 – regarded in the same shining light as Adhemar Ferreira da Silva, the balletic Brazilian who broke through the 16.50m barrier with his 16.56m triple jump at the 1955 Pan Am Games, also in Mexico City.
Overcoming adversity
Joao do Pulo endured a tough upbringing in the town of Pindamonhangaba in Sao Paulo State. Orphaned at the age of seven, he had to earn money washing street cars before becoming a car mechanic.
He was not just a triple jumping John. Two days before his mighty hop, step and jump in Mexico, he won Pan Am gold in the long jump with 8.29m, finishing 25cm clear of Arnie Robinson of the US, who claimed the Olympic crown in that event a year later.
The Cuban Alberto Juantorena and the Trinidadian Hasely Crawford, runners up in the 400m and 100m respectively, went on to strike Olympic gold in Montreal in 1976 – as did the US decathlete Bruce Jenner, winner of the decathlon with a Pan Am Games record tally of 8045 points.
Sadly, though, the double golden boy who outshone them all at the 1975 Pan American Games was unable to find a Midas touch in Canada.
Struggling for form after stomach surgery, De Oliveira had to settle for bronze in the triple jump with 16.90m, behind Saneyev (17.29m) and Butts (17.18m). He also placed fifth in the long jump.
He won three successive IAAF World Cup triple jump titles, in 1977, 1979 and 1981, and completed a hat-trick of Pan Am doubles in San Juan in 1979, defeating a young Carl Lewis in the long jump and an emerging Banks in the triple jump.
As Mel Watman highlighted in his book Olympic Track and Field History, both De Oliveira and Ian Campbell of Australia “were robbed by the blatant cheating of Russian officials” at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
While the unheralded Estonian-Soviet Jaak Uudmae took gold with 17.35m and Saneyev silver with 17.24m, the Brazilian had to settle for bronze with 17.22m. “Two huge jumps by De Oliveira of beyond 17.50m were inexplicably ruled out,” Watman noted.
To his eternal credit, De Oliveira, who had been shamefully booed by the Russian crowd, smiled and congratulated his Soviet rivals and thanked all of the event officials. However, as his long-time coach, Pedro Henrique de Toledo, later revealed, he broke down in tears on the bus back from the stadium to the athletes’ village, saying he had been cheated out of gold.
Tragedy was to follow. De Oliveira was left fighting for his life when his car was hit by that of a drunk driver in December 1981. His right leg was amputated nine months later.
His career over at the age of 27, De Oliveira enjoyed some political success in later life. He was twice elected as a deputy of Sao Paulo State but died in 1999, aged just 45.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
