As you all know, in 1957 Yuri Stepanov jumped 2.16 m (7'1") and broke the world record in the high jump. Shortly afterward it was noticed that he had used a built-up takeoff shoe (which was legal by the IAAF rule book at that time --nobody had realized until then that there was this loophole in the rules!) Soon other athletes (Russians, but also Swedes and probably others) started using built-up shoes, and finally the IAAF set a limit on the allowable thickness of the takeoff shoe: 13 mm. This is the rule that we still have today.
For a long time, I thought that in 1957 the Russians had worn a single type of built-up shoe, maybe 30 mm thick (that was just a wild guess on my part, or maybe I saw this number quoted somewhere). But then someone told me about 10 or 15 years ago that his recollecton was that the 13 mm build-up that was finally adopted by the IAAF was actually the build-up that Stepanov had used in his 2.16 m world record jump, and that this was the reason why the IAAF had adopted that particular thickness. I don't know if this is true, but if it is it would put the Stepanov jump in a new light in relation to marks made after 1957: It would be "legal" by today's rules. But I don't know if Stepanov's shoe was actually 13 mm thick. And somehow, I doubt that it was. My reasoning is that 1/2 inch is a nice round number that an American (or Brit Commonwealth type) would come up with, but 13 mm is a very weird number from a metric standpoint, so it would have been a strange coincidence that the Russians had come up accidentally with a metric thickness that just happened to equal a nice round number in the Imperial system. The alternative is a more likely scenario, that the IAAF came up with a nice, round Imperial measure (1/2 inch, which translates to 12.7 mm) that had nothing to do with whatever thickness Stepanov used, and then implemented this in the rulebook as the nearest metric value to that: 13 mm. This is the common practice in most other track measures: an Imperial number that gets rounded off to a metric value, and the metric value then becomes the official one. [For example, the minimum legal weight for the men's shot is 7.26 kg (rounded off upward from (16 lb * 0.4536 kg/lb =) 7.2576 kg. So a shot weighing 7.259 kg would be slightly heavier than 16 lb, but would be illegal for a world record.]
There may be a way to answer this question. Soon after the Stepanov record, Track & Field News showed on its cover a picture of Stepanov jumping, and the takeoff shoe seems to be clearly visible in the photo. Unfortunately, the only copy I have available of this photo is a very low resolution version that was posted about a year ago at this TFN website. If Garry could show us a full-size version of that picture, it might be possible to make a reasonably good estimate of the thickness of Stepanov's shoe.
Can anyone else shed more light into this question?
For a long time, I thought that in 1957 the Russians had worn a single type of built-up shoe, maybe 30 mm thick (that was just a wild guess on my part, or maybe I saw this number quoted somewhere). But then someone told me about 10 or 15 years ago that his recollecton was that the 13 mm build-up that was finally adopted by the IAAF was actually the build-up that Stepanov had used in his 2.16 m world record jump, and that this was the reason why the IAAF had adopted that particular thickness. I don't know if this is true, but if it is it would put the Stepanov jump in a new light in relation to marks made after 1957: It would be "legal" by today's rules. But I don't know if Stepanov's shoe was actually 13 mm thick. And somehow, I doubt that it was. My reasoning is that 1/2 inch is a nice round number that an American (or Brit Commonwealth type) would come up with, but 13 mm is a very weird number from a metric standpoint, so it would have been a strange coincidence that the Russians had come up accidentally with a metric thickness that just happened to equal a nice round number in the Imperial system. The alternative is a more likely scenario, that the IAAF came up with a nice, round Imperial measure (1/2 inch, which translates to 12.7 mm) that had nothing to do with whatever thickness Stepanov used, and then implemented this in the rulebook as the nearest metric value to that: 13 mm. This is the common practice in most other track measures: an Imperial number that gets rounded off to a metric value, and the metric value then becomes the official one. [For example, the minimum legal weight for the men's shot is 7.26 kg (rounded off upward from (16 lb * 0.4536 kg/lb =) 7.2576 kg. So a shot weighing 7.259 kg would be slightly heavier than 16 lb, but would be illegal for a world record.]
There may be a way to answer this question. Soon after the Stepanov record, Track & Field News showed on its cover a picture of Stepanov jumping, and the takeoff shoe seems to be clearly visible in the photo. Unfortunately, the only copy I have available of this photo is a very low resolution version that was posted about a year ago at this TFN website. If Garry could show us a full-size version of that picture, it might be possible to make a reasonably good estimate of the thickness of Stepanov's shoe.
Can anyone else shed more light into this question?
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