- You see athlete after athlete after athlete in a long jump, doing pretty much the same thing. And then you get a somersault? - I'd never done a somersault in my life, but athletes do dumb ass things. If it improves their performance. - My name is Tuariki Delamere, when I was born, I was given the names, John Edward Delamere I did pretty well at school. I was the top student, first or second, all the way through school. I came top of New Zealand for
Māori in school certificate. And in 1969, I was awarded the Ngārimu scholarship. I wanted to be the Olympic long jump, triple jump and high
jump champion (laughs). My last year in high school, I ended up doing almost
50 feet in the triple jump and more than 24 and a
half feet in the long jump. And so I wrote to the top 10 schools in the US university
athletic champs, and gee, they all came back and
offered me a scholarship. - John and I both attended university at Washington State. We entered this environment which was completely and
utterly foreign to us, but it was also wonderful. This was the era of sex,
drugs and rock and roll. And like the Holy Trinity, we indulged in just about everything. We arrived in heaven, basically. - I had never trained
like training every day. I didn't have a coach, didn't
really know much of anything, but I had this natural talent. - When you have intercollegiate meets, you're competing at a level much, much higher than we ever did here. So yeah, that is always quite a shock. You have to be at the top
of your game, every weekend. - When I first started, they put up the warm-up on the board and I couldn't finish the warm-up. (laughs) - Long jump has been described, as a high jump at the end of a sprint. As soon as you take off, you start to forward rotate. In the hitch kick and the hang technique, you're actually working to
counter the forward rotation that you get at takeoff. If you didn't use the hang
or hitch kick technique, you'd actually finish flat on your face. - The way I got into the somersault, is I'd read some articles and sports tech magazines if you like and debating it and I'd looked at it and I thought about it, I went back and had a chat with
the biomechanics professor, and we discussed it and we decided, it's a better way to jump. All long jumpers actually
jump up and backwards. Otherwise they fall on their face. And we're thinking, don't fight the rotation, take
it to its natural conclusion. I debuted my opening performance, at the Pacific Championships
in the LA Coliseum. The board was about five
metres from the pit. So that's what, 16 and a half feet. And it was never a big problem. When you're jumping 24, 25, 26 feet. But now I can see it, I was thinking... crap, That's a long way if I don't get over. but hey, if it can help me get
closer to the world record, I'm going to give it a go and hope I don't break my neck. That freaked them all out
because no one was expecting it. Not even my teammates. - On the front page of the LA Times, there was a photo sequence of four shots, of John doing this phenomenal thing, which was completely
unheard of and unseen. It was just a fascination
to the sporting world. - My biggest problem was I'm not a gymnast and I have no internal
concept of time and space. And once I took off, I just had to wait, and I reacted when I
felt I hit the ground, but that was too late, because when I hit the
ground with my feet, my rear end came in about two feet behind. So here I am, LA Coliseum, May
1974 on the long jump runway. No one knows I'm going to do a somersault. So take off from the board, go through, no hitch kick, this time I do the somersault. My feet landed here at about 8m 40cm, but because I didn't really know what I was doing in
terms of somersaulting, I fell back to 7m 70cm. If I'd managed to pull this one off here, without falling back, that would have been the longest jump in history at sea level. - I think the technique
had a lot of potential. And if John could do, something in the range of the mid-eights, shall we say, he could hone that. It's really hard to say because he was never really
afforded that opportunity. - In 1975, the technique got banned. And I think quite rightly. Landing in a, sort of sandpit, it was a disaster waiting to happen. - They tried to say it's dangerous, but if it's dangerous
and you gotta ban it, then you better ban gymnastics completely. - The comparison is Dick Fosbury, who did the back flip
over the high jump bar. With the Fosbury flop, it was introduced, seen for the first time ever, at the Mexico Olympics.
And then everybody did it. So that's the difference because they couldn't change that then. It was so widely used, it was impossible to change that rule. Whereas in John's case, he was really the only one doing it, and so, cut the rule, no one else is affected, easy. But had it lasted a bit longer, I believe it would have taken off. And others would have
attempted it because, it logically had everything going for it. - If the somersault hadn't
been banned by those old fuddy-duddys who ran
world athletics back then, the world record would
be over 30 feet now. - Oh, if it was legal, then,
the somersault technique, has been shown to be
biomechanically the best. And in competitions
where it has been used, it's been shown to be the best technique. - The sport of track
and field is wonderful, but it really only gets
onto the world stage once every four years at the Olympics. And so, you need a bit of
pizzazz, a bit of colour, a bit of style, a bit of panache, and that technique I
thought brought all of that. When you look at the International
Federation rules now, it's actually rule number three. So they put it up there, that's the third strongest
rule in this particular event. You shan't step over the board. You can't jump either side of the board. And thou shalt not somersault. - Yeah, right now it's just a blip in the history of athletics. While forever, I guess, I'm going to remain
the world record holder for the somersault long jump. I would love to see them legalise it again 'cause there's no reason
to have made it illegal.
