Phil Shinnick Receives His World Long Jump Record — 58 Years Later

The former University of Washington track man never gave up in his quest to right the wrong.

The gesture lasted barely a minute, wiping away 58 years of frustration and indignation, and making the world whole again.

On the final day of the U.S. Olympic Trials at newly renovated Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, an aging gracefully Phil Shinnick last week strode out on to the running surface in the suffocating evening heat and accepted a simple plaque from Mike Powell.

The two men shook hands, a smiling Shinnick held up the bauble and that was it.

There were no long speeches. No rush of media to surround them. No SportsCenter moment.

Yet this was a huge story that played out in front of everyone in this Oregonian track and field haven, where the headlines should have read: 78-year-old man sets world record in the long jump.

Finally.

World Athletics determined that Shinnick retroactively deserved to be recognized as the best on the planet in his event for 16 glorious months, from May 25, 1963, to September 12, 1964.

Luckily, he was still alive, cogent, a college kid again for just an instant, to see it all transpire in front of him.

"It is true," Shinnick said, "I don't give up."

Phil Shinnick's world record-holder plaque / Phil Shinnick

Standing next to him in the 103-degree temperature at 8 p.m., nearly six full decades after the fact, was Powell, a fitting companion. Powell was the current long-jump record-holder with a leap of 29 feet and 4 1/4 inches set in 1991 and a strong Shinnick supporter, and he gladly represented the track world in making up for its shortcoming. 

Powell welcomed Shinnick into a coveted and exclusive athletic fraternity. Sharing the moment, these two men were the global best in their sporting specialties at one point in time and supposedly no one could ever take that away from them.

With Shinnick, though, they tried.

In 1963, this then University of Washington track man from Spokane, Washington, soared 27 feet and 4 inches (8.33 meters) with the perfect long jump at the Modesto Relays — three-quarters of an inch longer than the world-record holder Igor Ter-Ovanesyan from Russia and two feet longer than his personal best.

Shinnick, who was 20, felt stunned and elated over what he'd done, doubly so when Husky pole vaulter and close friend Brian Sternberg came up with his own world record of 16 feet and 7 inches in the same California meet less than an hour later. In all, five world records were set during this singular Modesto competition.

"I knew I had a good jump," Shinnick recalled in a memoir he's not published yet. "I thought maybe 25½ feet. I stood by the pit while they reeled out the steel tape. I saw 25 feet, then 26, and I began to feel giddy. When 27 came out, I almost fell over backwards."

Incredibly, officials at this prestigious track event didn't use a wind gauge to certify Shinnick's performance; instead they monitored a junior-college hurdles championship held simultaneously with the only one they had.

They made the long jumper pay for this arbitrary equipment decision, informing the now distraught UW athlete there would be no new world standard recognized because of a procedural error on their behalf.

"The very worst and best thing happened to me in the same day," he said.

Yet this stubborn, competitive man never once accepted that faulty decision. Shinnick wanted full credit for what he did in Modesto. He fought every athletic governing body he could to make this happen as the world continually changed around him for decades.

He did this while becoming a doctor specializing in Chinese medicines and moving to New York City. While turning himself into an Olympic athlete, an acupuncturist, a scientific writer, the founder of Athletes for Peace, a middle-aged man and a senior citizen.

He challenged this track decision after turning himself into an activist and labeled a subversive. After becoming anti-war, anti-nuclear, anti-racism, anti-tobacco, pro-Soviet, pro-Chinese and pro-Contra. After being put on the FBI watch list and jailed briefly for an alleged but never proven connection to the Patty Hearst kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical group.

This is a man who has never been afraid to take on anyone in a position of power if he felt things were unjust.

Yet same as his jump, everything aligned just right for Shinnick to receive the attention, satisfaction and world-record ownership that was rightfully his.

The UW initially pressed his case with a long-ago letter to United States Track and Field (USTAF). Current school president Ana Mari Cauce and Husky athletic director Jennifer Cohen followed up with added pressure. 

Former Washington State University track coach John Chaplin and late ex-Husky assistant track coach Bill Roe became USTAF executives. Former UW track man Grant Birkenshire from New Zealand wrote Shinnick's appeal to the American track organization.

Sebastian Coe and John Richards assumed similar positions of influence in the international track organization. Triple jump world record-holder Willie Banks became a council member. 

Each of them knew of Shinnick and his story, and sympathized with his plight.

Hugh Fraser, once a renowned Canadian sprint champion and now a powerful track administrator, was selected as the sole arbitrator of the case, which was held over Zoom video sessions in the past year. He had all of the facts recited to him and deliberated much like the American Supreme Court would.  

Fraser ruled in favor of the aggrieved long jumper, who could now list all of his lifetime accomplishments without having an asterisk or question mark attached to one.

"I'm feeling better," Shinnick said. "I woke up happy."

As an older person, he probably couldn't jump a third of his world-record distance now, though he remains fit and even dunked a basketball when he was 55. Yet he always had the proper amount of energy to make as many people aware and uncomfortable over what had been done to him.

Shinnick also had plenty of backers through the years. Long jumper Ralph Boston and the late hammer thrower Harold Connolly, both Olympic gold medalists who competed in Modesto in 1963, previously testified that there was no discernible wind at the time of the jump that would have enhanced Shinnick's performance.

The meet director, the late Tom Moore, long argued that claim to be true. 

Others took whatever video footage of the event remained and did computations of flags rippling in the wind, offering further proof that Shinnick deserved better than he got. 

In 2003, the USTAF finally recognized Shinnick's world record, but the international authorities continued to ignore him. He was part way down the runway in being taken seriously.

This past May, World Athletics finally agreed with the former Husky and his persistent challenge. There was no more opposition to Shinnick. Once and for all, the global organization made him a consensus world record-holder from a near forgotten time.

He'd probably lost out on $100,000, which is what track organizations generally paid world-record holders back then for such an accomplishment, an amount that has grown to $1 million today. Money wasn't the issue.

While Shinnick was invited to central Oregon to take his long-awaited bow standing in the record triple-digit heat, he was given no publicity by NBC, which provided television coverage of the trials. A plaque would have to do.

There is irony in that he competed in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics soon after obtaining his unrecognized record and the Japanese city is now set to host the games for the first time since.

Shinnick left Eugene knowing that the three American long jumpers who qualified for the upcoming games did so with leaps ranging from 27-1 to 27-7, which means his Modesto performance was still long enough to be Olympics worthy.

Everything, it seems, eventually goes full circle.

Or, in Shinnick's case, it finally goes the distance. 

All 27 feet and 4 1/4 inches of it.

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