Martin Gillingham
With United States golfers apparently too scared to step on to a transatlantic jet and the world seemingly on the brink of war, what we’d give for a global superstar who could not only go under par at the Belfry but also, between times, broker peace in the Middle East.
Step forward Wilson, the kind of sporting superhero we haven’t seen since World War II. In his prime, Wilson climbed Everest it’s claimed he did so before even Hilary and Tensing and also played Test cricket. He bowled so fast he was capable of reducing Donald Bradman’s bat to splinters.
But then Wilson had a remarkable talent. Here was a man who could run 100 yards in eight seconds, which, when converted to the metric equivalent of 100m, still makes him about 8m faster than the officially International Association of Athletics Federations-recognised world record holder, Maurice Greene. Such was Wilson’s talent that on a balmy summer’s afternoon in Budapest in 1939 he broke four world records.
Greene will have you know that he’s the world’s fastest man. Readers of The Wizard comics will, however, disagree. More than half-a-century ago they were brought up on the legend of the greatest sportsman to have ever lived. Wilson was a man who set records that simply would never be broken. Or would they?
No man, it was claimed, would ever get close to Wilson’s 32-foot long jump. And, so far, they’ve proved right. Wilson’s leap remains more than two feet beyond the most accomplished of the ordinary mortals to have performed since: the best of whom has been Mike Powell whose 8,95m (29ft 4in) won the world title in Tokyo 10 years ago. Also safe is Wilson’s 80-foot shot-put. The American Randy Barnes holds the official world mark at 23,12m (75ft 10in). Barnes, who competed on a regimen of anabolic steroids, has since been banned for life. Were the drug testers around in Wilson’s day, all his urine would have revealed was a staple diet of nuts and berries.
But time marches on. Wilson’s 3mins 45sec for the mile, which was more than 21 seconds faster than Sydney Wooderson’s 1937 best when he first broke the world record, has now been wiped from the record books by Noureddine Morceli and then Hicham El Guerrouj. The Moroccan’s 3:43.13 in Rome two years ago would have been unthinkable to Wilson’s creator in the 1930s.
So too would have been Javier Sotomayor’s 2,45m high jump. More than half-a-century ago Wilson was the first man to clear eight feet before another had even gone over seven. At the time of Wilson’s great achievement Melvin Walker at 2,09m was the official world record holder. Now even modern man has gone over eight feet.
And, as we embark on another century of track and field, I wonder how many more of Wilson’s records are set to fall?