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Ralph Boston, Olympic long-jump champion who broke the world record six times – obituary
Ralph Harold Boston was born on Might 9 1939 in Laurel, Mississippi, to Peter, a railway fireman-turned farmer, and Eulalia. He was a promising athlete from early on, breaking the nationwide highschool file within the 180-yard hurdles.
He studied biochemistry at Tennessee State College, the place he competed in all of the leaping occasions, in addition to the sprints and excessive hurdles. However athletics was not his most well-liked sporting alternative: “I needed to play [American] soccer, however my mom didn’t like that. In these days, Mama prevailed.”
Set on his method by Eulalia, he gained the 1960 Collegiate lengthy bounce title, then quickly after, on the MT SAC Relays, an athletics occasion at San Antonio School in California, he jumped 26ft 11in, three inches longer than Jesse Owens had managed in 1935. “Immediately individuals recognised me,” Boston recalled.