Beamon entered the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City as the favorite, having won 22 of the 23 meets he had competed in that year, including a career best of 8.33 m (equivalent to 27 ft. 4 in.) and a world's best of 8.39 m (27 ft. 6 1/2 in.) that was ineligible for the record books due to excessive wind assistance. He came close to missing the final, overstepping on his first two attempts in qualifying. With only one chance left, Beamon re-measured his approach run from a spot in front of the board and made a fair jump that advanced him to the final. There he faced the two previous gold-medal winners, American Ralph Boston (1960) and Lynn Davies of Great Britain (1964), and two-time bronze medallist Igor Ter-Ovanesyan of the Soviet Union.[3]
On October 18, Beamon set a world record for the long jump with a first jump of 8.90 m (29 ft. 2 1/2 in.), bettering the existing record by 55 cm (21 3/4 in.). When the announcer called out the distance for the jump, Beamon – unfamiliar with metric measurements – still did not realize what he had done.[4] When his teammate and coach Ralph Boston told him that he had broken the world record by nearly 2 feet, his legs gave way and an astonished and overwhelmed Beamon suffered a brief cataleptic seizure brought on by the emotional shock,[5] and collapsed to his knees, his body unable to support itself, placing his hands over his face. In one of the more enduring images of the Games, his competitors then helped him to his feet.[6] The defending Olympic champion Lynn Davies told Beamon, "You have destroyed this event," and in sports jargon, a new adjective – Beamonesque – came into use to describe spectacular feats.[7]
