Record Breakers: The Greatest Competition in Olympic History
Just over two weeks ago, after nearly a month of competition, the fireworks ended, the remaining athletes flew home from Tokyo, and the Olympic flame was extinguished. The 32nd Olympiad was officially declared closed. It may have been an Olympics the Japanese people didn’t want but, as quickly became apparent, it was an Olympics that the rest of the world needed. Although the seats in the stadiums were often empty, the athletes managed to provide some superb entertainment.
In the pool, Aussie Emma Mckeon cleaned up, earning seven medals (4 Golds, 3 Bronzes) to equal the record for the number of medals won by a woman at a single Olympics. Jumping into the same pool, Tom Daley finally managed to win that seemingly elusive Olympic Gold. On the track a new nation emerged as kings of the sprinting world. The unlikely Italian 4 X 100m team beat Great Britain by a hundredth of a second to nick the gold, days after Marcell Jacobs shocked the world to win the men’s 100m. For me though, the most memorable moment of the Tokyo 2020 Games was the men’s High Jump final, where Qatari Mutaz Barshim and Italian Gianmarco Tamberi shared gold. The scenes that followed the agreement to share the medal perfectly displayed the spirit of the Olympics. In a year that saw Italy win the Euros and Eurovision, it probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Italy picked up a record number of Olympic medals with 40 medals.
But as remarkable as the achievements of some of their athletes may have been this year, no Italian Olympian has competed in a competition as intensely competitive or record breaking as Triple Jumper Giuseppe Gentile at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. Born in Latina, a province in Lazio on 4 September 1943, Gentile’s birthday came just a day after the Allied invasion of Mussolini’s Italy began. His early life is a bit of an enigma, but we do know that by the age of nineteen he was already competing for his country at a major championship. Despite not making it past the first qualifying stage, his appearance at the 1962 European Championships proved there was a Triple Jumping great waiting to leap out of him. At 1966 Europeans he made it to final, finishing in 9th place. The following year he competed in the European Indoor Games in Prague. Gentile could only manage a 10th place finish this time. If he was to make an impact at next year’s Olympics, the Italian had a lot of ground to make up.
Nelson Prudencio was Brazil’s big hope for a gold medal at the 1968 Olympic Games. Prudencio was born on 4 April 1944 in Lins, Sao Paulo. Growing up in relative poverty, Prudencio’s athletics career had to be juggled with his job at a sewing factory in Jundai, Sao Paulo. As if these two were not time consuming enough, Prudencio was also studying at university as he prepared for Mexico City. Unlike Gentile, the Brazilian went into the Mexico City Games in good form, having won a silver medal at the 1967 Pan American Games. Prudencio was going to Mexico with a nation’s hopes on his shoulders and the burden of his own lofty ambition.
The youngest of these three Olympic debutants was the Soviet Union’s Viktor Saneyev. Born on 3 October 1945 in Sukhumi (in modern day Georgia), Saneyev was the third youngest athlete to reach the 1968 Triple Jump final, with only the German Joachim Kugler and fellow Soviet Nikolay Dudkin being his juniors. Despite this, Saneyev went into the competition with a reputation as a high-level competitor. In the 1967 European Cup Triple Jump final, Saneyev outjumped the double Olympic champion Józef Schmidt to win the competition, helping the Soviet Union to win the second iteration of the Cup. Despite only being 22, Viktor Saneyev was ready to compete with the very best at his first Olympic games.
At the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, the Triple Jumpers had three attempts to record a jump of 16.10 metres to qualify for the final. If less than 12 athletes managed to reach that target, the next best jumpers would fill the remaining places, so the final boasted 12 competitors. As it happened, 13 athletes managed to surpass 16.10. The competition’s youngest athlete Nikolay Dudkin sneaked into 13th spot with an effort of 16.15. In his first attempt, Giuseppe Gentile fouled, leaving him with a long wait as he watched competitor after competitor jump. He looked on as Nelson Prudencio jumped a respectable but unsatisfactory 15.79. Then, he watched the much fancied Saneyev qualify with his first jump, as he landed in the sand at 16.22 metres. Prudencio qualified with his second effort, jumping a much more impressive 16.46. The Soviet and the Brazilian both qualified with ease. But when Qualification was over, nobody was talking about the two of them; it was the rank outsider Gentile that captured the attention of all those watching. With his second effort, Gentile broke the world record with an effort of 17.10 metres. The previous world record had stood at 17.03 and had been held by the Pole Józef Schmidt, who was now competing in the same competition as Gentile and had a front row viewing of his career defining effort being surpassed.
The final took place a day later, on 17 October. Many were wondering if Gentile’s jump in qualification was just a fluke or if he was genuinely good enough to compete for a medal. The Italian didn’t make people wait too long to find out the answer. Having qualified first, Gentile jumped last. When he stood at the start of the runway for his first jump in an Olympic final, Prudencio was in bronze medal position, Saneyev in silver and in the gold medal position was the Senegalese Mansour Dia, who had just jumped 16.71 metres. Gentile ran up, hopped, skipped, jumped and landed. The world record he had earned yesterday had been beaten. When he got out of the sand to hear he had just jumped a massive 17.22 metres, you could forgive Gentile for thinking he had just wrapped up the Gold medal with his first jump. After the end of the second round Gentile remained firmly in first place. Nelson Prudencio had begun to show his credentials as a challenger to Gentile however, after he became the second man in the competition to jump post-17m with a 17.05.
While Gentile was worrying about Prudencio, it was Saneyev he should have been keeping his eye on. In round three, the Soviet edged ahead of the Italian after recording a jump of 17.23 metres. For the first time the young Soviet prodigy was ahead. For the third time in the same competition the world record had been broken. After the third round had been completed, only the top eight continued to jump, with everyone in 9th-13th place The fourth round went ahead with no changes to the medal positions. 1st Saneyev, 2nd Gentile, 3rd Prudencio. The Brazilian had not given up on his hunt for gold though. In the fifth round it was he who took the initiative, with an astonishing leap of 17.27 metres. Gentile and Saneyev jumped after him, but neither could get close to Prudencio’s mammoth effort.
The gauntlet had been thrown down. Only a gravity defying leap could get between Prudencio and his nation’s first gold. The first to jump in the final round was Józef Schmidt. Having watched his previous world record completely disregarded by the event’s new guard, he had one last opportunity to show the newbies how it was done. He couldn’t leave the mark he desired, however. His final jump of 16.89 was the best he had managed over the two days of competition, but it was some way off what was required to earn a medal. Senegal’s Mansour Dia was up next. Dia had faded after his first round heroics and his final round jump of 15.83 was way off the mark. He finished in 8th place.
The other competitors tried and failed to break into the medals, although it’s worth giving a nod to the American Art Walker. Walker finished in 4th place, but his final jump was recorded as 17.12. If he had jumped that with his first jump it would have been another world record. Unfortunately for Art’s legacy, he didn’t. Prudencio jumped third to last. He failed to improve on his previous jump, although the 17.15 he did manage was still pretty remarkable. Gentile was up next, with the Italian needing the jump of his life for the third time in the competition to improve upon his bronze. It was one ask too many as he fouled his final jump. Nevertheless, for a man who before the tournament would have seen qualifying for the final as success, to leave with a medal and two world record breaking leaps he could go home satisfied. There was just one man left. Viktor Saneyev. The Georgian born Soviet shattered Prudencio’s distance and with it Brazil’s hopes of a gold. His final effort was recorded as 17.39 metres. It was the fifth time the world record had been broken in the same competition – a feat that had never occurred before nor has it happened since. Viktor Saneyev had snatched victory at the very death, thus taking centre stage (and the central podium position) in the most competitive event in Olympic history.
Saneyev went on to have one of the most decorated careers in Triple Jump history. He defended his Mexico City gold four years later in Munich. He also claimed the gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and was still competing in 1980, when he managed to earn a silver medal at the highly controversial 1980 Moscow Olympics. Following his retirement, Saneyev became an Athletics coach in Georgia, before later moving to Australia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Nelson Prudencio also made it to the 1972 Munich Olympics. He couldn’t quite hit the levels he managed in Mexico City, but his 17.05m was enough to earn him a bronze medal. He also qualified for the 1976 Olympics but unlike Saneyev his performances had begun to wane and he could only manage a 10th place finish. After his Triple Jump career came to an end, the Brazilian became a professor of Physical Education at the Federal University of Sao Carlos. He also served as Vice President of the Brazilian Athletics Confederation for a period. Sadly, Prudencio passed away on 23 November 2012 with lung cancer.
Giuseppe Gentile also appeared at the 1968 Olympics, but unlike Saneyev and Prudencio, the Italian was unable to make an impact. He finished 16th in qualifying, falling short of the distance required to reach the final. Athletics was not the only thing Gentile was known for in Italy. An appearance in the 1969 film Medea ensured he was a household name there for years. But his appearance in an Italian adaptation of a story from Greek Mythology is not how he will be best remembered. It was the role he played in one of sport’s greatest competitions, starring alongside Nelson Prudencio and Viktor Saneyev.
Sources:
https://worldathletics.org/athletes/_/14356828?competitorId=14356828&counrty=_
https://www.cob.org.br/pt/cob/time-brasil/atletas/nelson-prudencio
https://olympics.com/en/athletes/viktor-saneev
The longest and shortest held Olympic records | Bluefin Sport
Athletics at the 1968 Summer Olympics – Men's triple jump - Wikipedia
Cover image:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Viktor_Saneyev_1968.jpg
Credit: Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
