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Ralph BostonAmerican athlete, talented track and field athlete.
Date of Birth: 09.05.1939
Country:  USA |
Content:
Early Life and Career
Ralph Harold Boston was born on May 9, 1939, in Laurel, Mississippi. As a student at the University of Tennessee, he won the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) long jump championship in 1960. That August, he broke the world record in the same event, a feat that had eluded Jesse Owens for 25 years.
Olympic Glory
Boston qualified for the 1960 Rome Olympics, where he won the gold medal in the long jump with an Olympic record of 8.12 meters (26 feet 7 ½ inches). He repeated his success in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, setting a new world record of 8.28 meters (27 feet 2 inches). Despite losing the world record and his American title in 1968, Boston continued to compete.
Coaching Bob Beamon
When Bob Beamon was dismissed from the University of Texas at El Paso track team for refusing to compete against Brigham Young University (which he viewed as a racist institution), Boston unofficially coached him. At the 1968 Olympics, he witnessed Beamon's iconic "21st-century jump" of 8.90 meters (29 feet 2 ½ inches), extending Boston's world record by a staggering 55 centimeters.
Retirement and Legacy
After the 1968 Olympics, Boston retired from competitive athletics. He became a coordinator of the University of Tennessee's Minority Affairs Committee and served as the university's assistant vice chancellor from 1968-1975. Boston also provided color commentary for track and field events on CBS Sports' "CBS Sports Spectacular." He was inducted into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974 and the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1985. In 2010, the Los Angeles Times described him as a "divorced great-grandfather writing an autobiography."
