World Athletics (International Athletics Federation) decided to abandon its controversial long jump reform project, which envisaged the elimination of the take-off board to limit failed attempts, due to strong opposition from athletes.
“World Athletics listened to its athletes and decided to indefinitely suspend testing of a new proposed takeoff zone for horizontal jumps,” a federation spokesperson told AFP on Thursday (4) evening, confirming information from the British newspaper The Guardian.
“Athletes don’t want (this reform)”, admitted the general director of World Athletics, Jon Ridgeon, in an interview with the newspaper. “We don’t want to go to war with those who matter most to us.”
In February 2024, the International Athletics Federation provoked the ire of long jumpers by announcing that it was considering eliminating the take-off board and replacing it with a longer “take-off zone”, with each attempt measured from the jumper’s take-off foot.
The idea was to eliminate downtime related to failed attempts, aiming to make competitions more dynamic, as the audience, especially for field events, is declining.
A 40-centimeter-wide takeoff zone, which would replace the traditional 20-centimeter board, was tested for the first time at an international athletics competition in Düsseldorf, Germany, in February 2025.
But the project, which was supposed to be validated in 2026, never had the support of the athletes, who were very attached to the technical precision of their discipline, which since the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 has consisted of taking the impulse to jump as far as possible in a sandbox without stepping on the impulsion board from which attempts are measured.
“It’s nonsense. If you apply these rules, I will leave the long jump”, Greek double Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglu had declared, while Carl Lewis, nine-time Olympic champion, four of them in a row in long jump, described the project as “a joke”.
“The format (with a take-off zone) was well received by fans, but received almost no support from athletes”, acknowledged World Athletics. “Boost zones may be considered in the future for completely new disciplines, but at the moment there are no official plans.”
