Thirty years since Lopez, Pedroso and Sotomayor topped the world in Barcelona

For Ivan Pedroso, the 1992 Olympic Games on Montjuic hill, overlooking Barcelona, proved to be a peak too soon.

As a 19-year-old novice, the fledgling Cuban long jumper landed 23cm shy of the podium, finishing fourth behind the US trio Carl Lewis, Mike Powell and Joe Greene.

It was different for his celebrated compatriot Javier Sotomayor.

At 24, the boyhood acrophobic – the world high jump record-holder with a fear of heights – was at the prolonged peak of his own jumping powers.

The only man in history to have cleared eight feet (as he still remains to this day), Sotomayor only needed a first-time clearance at 2.34m, 10cm shy of the landmark 2.44m (8ft 1/8in) world record he set in the Puerto Rican capital San Juan in 1989, to secure the one Olympic gold of his career.

Returning to the Barcelona Olympic complex for the 1995 World Athletics Indoor Championships, both Cuban jumpers brought a Midas touch to bear inside the Palau St Jordi.

On days two and three of the competition, the maturing Pedroso plundered the second of the record five world indoor long jump titles he collected in the course of his glitteringly consistent career, while the seasoned Sotomayor secured the third of his four world indoor high jump crowns.

Between them, the dynamic jumping duo happen to be responsible for precisely half of the 18 gold medals Cuba has earned in the 40-year history of the World Athletics Indoor Championships.

Outdoor world record pangs

Pedroso was the first to strike that weekend back on Montjuic, early on the evening of Saturday 11 March 1995.

A somewhat surprise winner ahead of Olympic bronze medallist Greene at the 1993 World Indoor Championships in Toronto, the young man from Havana uncorked a third-round leap of 8.51m to not only finish comfortably clear of his closest challenger (Mattias Sunneborn of Sweden took silver with 8.20m) but also obliterate Larry Myricks’ championship record of 8.37m.

Only Lewis had ever long jumped farther indoors, with a best of 8.79m in New York in 1984.

It was a tangible marker of Pedroso’s pedigree as one of the all-time elite of the men’s long jump.

Despite his deceptively slender frame – 176cm (5ft 9in), 66kg (145lb) – he packed a potent blend of speed, power and technique, exploding off the take-off board and soaring through the air to distances beyond the reach of his bigger, seemingly stronger, rivals.

Pedroso won four successive world outdoor titles: in Gothenburg in 1995, Athens in 1997, Seville in 1999 and Edmonton in 2001.

Hampered by a hamstring injury at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where he finished down in 12th, he landed Olympic gold in Sydney in 2000, dramatically trumping the inspired Australian Jai Taurima in the final round.

His best jump outdoors was 8.71m in Salamanca in 1995. He also jumped 8.96m that year at high altitude in Sestriere but was denied a world record because someone was inadvertently obstructing the wind gauge, which was showing a legal 1.2m/s.

“I went on to win nine world titles and the Olympic title but the pain from missing out on the world record still lingers,” he confessed in 2018.

First and second most successful all time

Pedroso followed his world indoor successes of 1993 and 1995 with further victories in Paris in 1997, Maebashi in 1999 and Lisbon in 2001, becoming the first athlete to win five titles in an individual event, still a record men’s haul but subsequently eclipsed by Mozambique’s Maria Mutola with her magnificent seven gold medals in the women’s 800m.

Ahead of the World Athletics Indoor Championships Nanjing 25, which run from 21-23 March, the Cuban still holds the championship record in the men’s long jump, courtesy of the 8.62m he leaped in Maebashi in 1999 – ranking third on the world indoor all-time list behind Lewis (8.73m) and Germany’s Sebastian Beyer (8.71m).

Sotomayor owns the oldest championships best performance on the men’s side: the 2.43m he cleared to claim his first world indoor title in Budapest in 1989.

That broke German Carlo Thranhardt’s one-year-old world indoor record and remains unmatched indoors to this day.

Behind Pedroso, Sotomayor is the second most successful individual male athlete in the history of the World Indoor Championships, with four gold medals – from Budapest in 1989, Toronto in 1993, Barcelona in 1995 and Maebashi in 1999 – plus a bronze from Seville in 1991 and a silver from the pioneering World Indoor Games in Paris in 1995.

His victory in Barcelona completed a memorable weekend for Cuba in the Catalan capital. They won three golds and ended up third on the medals table, behind Russia (five) and the USA (four).

Two years later in Paris they finished second to the USA with another hat-trick of golds, thanks to Pedroso in the men’s long jump, Anier Garcia in the men’s 60m hurdles and Yoel Garcia in the men’s triple jump.

A family double

The third gold in Barcelona came in the women’s 60m hurdles.

Pedroso was still basking in the glory of his success from the previous day when his cousin Aliuska Lopez made it a famous family double by upsetting clear favourite Olga Shishigina of Kazakhstan in a blanket finish, both women clocking 7.92.

Her dramatic victory on the final day of action in the Palau Sant Jordi, Sunday 12 March, followed what was, by comparison, a routine triumph for Sotomayor.

He only needed four jumps – first-time clearances at 2.24m, 2.32m, 2.35m and 2.38m – to secure first place ahead of Greece’s Lambros Papakostas, the only other jumper who managed to negotiate 2.35m.

Outdoors, in addition to his Barcelona Olympic success, the powerfully built 6ft 4in (1.93m) Sotomayor won world titles in Stuttgart in 1993 and in Athens in 1997.

He also set three outdoor world records: 2.43m in Salamanca in 1988, 2.44m in San Juan in 1989 and the 2.45m in Salamanca in 1993 that remains intact today.

At 57, he remains involved in the sport as a vice president of the Cuban Athletics Federation.

Pedroso, 52 and settled in Spain, has become a producer of the planet’s finest triple jumping talent, having coached Teddy Tamgho of France, Venezuela’s Yulimar Rojas and the Cuban-Spanish Jordan Diaz to a glittering array of global titles.

Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage