See, the amazing thing is not that Mike Powell’s record hasn’t been broken. It’s that nobody has even come close. Nobody has jumped 29 feet since that day in Tokyo in 1991. Nobody has come within eight inches of the record since that day. At the 2008 Olympics, 27 feet, 4 inches was good enough for gold — the worst gold medal performance in more than 35 years. As the greatest long jumper who ever lived likes to say: “These guys come out now, jump 28 feet, take their gold medal and go home like they did something.”

And the greatest long jumper who ever lived — and the 30-foot jump that never happened — is at the heart of our story.