Almost three weeks before this championship, Jonathan Edwards had just marginally improved upon Willie Banks' ten year old world record (17.97m), by jumping 17.98m in Salamanca. In the preliminary round he was not even the #1 qualifier, edged out by Jérôme Romain. On his first trip down the runway in the final, Edwards became the first athlete in the world to jump further than 18 metres without wind assistance, registering a world record jump of 18.16 m. In his second jump, he jumped even further, setting a new world record of 18.29 m (60 ft 0 in), the first jump one 60 feet and a .31 m (1 ft 0 in) improvement over his previous world record. 67 cm further than silver medal winner Brian Wellman. It took more than 20 years for Christian Taylor to become the first man to jump beyond Edwards' first record.
