Bob Beamon’s Historic 1968 Olympic Gold Medal Up for Auction

The medal is estimated to fetch between $400,000-$600,000 according to Christie’s.

If you’ve always wanted an Olympic gold medal but didn’t want to bother with that whole "being an Olympian” part of the process, your time has arrived.

This week, Christie’s auction house is set to auction off Bob Beamon’s 1968 Summer Olympics gold medal for men’s long jump.

Beamon’s win was one of the highlights of the Mexico games, with the athlete jumping 29 feet 2 inches—nearly two feet longer than the previous longest—setting a world record in the process. That record would fall 23 years later to American Mike Powell in 1991, but it remains as the Olympic record.

“I could hear my heartbeat. And it was beating and so as I took off down the runway all I could hear was my heartbeat. I couldn't even hear my feet pounding up against the rubberized track,” Beamon told Sky Sports in a 2001 interview. After he landed, Beamon could see the judges talking to one another and had assumed his jump wasn’t good. “And so I said: ‘Oh well, what I will do is I’ll settle for this one but when I come back, I’m really going to take a real big one.’” 

In reality, the judges couldn’t correctly gauge Beamon’s jump—their electronic measuring device could only measure up to 28 feet, so an actual tape measure was required.

The medal features imagery by Italian artist Giuseppe Cassioli, whose artwork depicting the goddess of Victory was first used for the medals during the 1928 Amsterdam games and was used through the 2000 games in Sydney. The front side of Beamon’s medal includes the inscription “XIX OLIMIADA MEXICO 1968” with artwork by artists Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, Eduardo Terrazas, and Lance Wyman, who drew from 1960’s op-art and traditional patterns of the Huichol peoples of Mexico. The opposite side of the medal is inscribed “Salto de longitud varonil,” translating to "men’s long jump.”

The auction is a surefire way to get your hands on a gold medal—without resorting to more nefarious methods. Just make sure you have a cool $500,000 lying around in line with Christie’s estimate for the award.

posted Sunday February 4th
by Runner’s World