Mike Powell tells the story of the picture

World long jump record holder Mike Powell is face down in the sand at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. The US long jump legend explains more…

“What I’m thinking at that moment is it is the worst athletics moment of my life because I realised I was not going to be an Olympic gold medallist.

"Physically, the pain was also very high too because the muscle in my hip detached 60 per cent from the bone.

"That season I was coming to the end of my career but I always knew if I jumped well I could win. That year the Cuban Ivan Pedroso started jumping really well and I knew my best would not beat his best, but he got injured so that’s when I started to believe I could get a medal out of this. But when Carl Lewis jumped 8.50m with his third round jump I couldn’t believe it.

"I was having problems with my approach and when Carl Lewis had that jump, I walked over to him and said, ‘Where the hell did that come from? You’ve not jumped like that in two years. You’ve already got eight Olympic gold medals [it was soon to be nine] can’t you let me have one?’

"After my first jump I started to feel a pain in my groin. I felt a real pain after round five my doctor told me not to jump anymore. But I thought, no, it’s the Olympics, I’m going to jump 8.51m and they are going to roll me out of the pit and I’m going to have my Derek Redmond [the British 400m sprinter limped around the full-lap of his semi-final of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games despite picking up an injury] moment.

"But when I took off for my final jump it was like someone had shot me in the leg. Physically, I have never felt that much pain in my life and mentally it was hard because I knew I would never be a gold medallist.

"I had the same agent as Michael Johnson and we had a gold medal party planned because I was supposed to match his gold medal achievement by winning the long jump. I was having a really hard time keeping it together and Daley Thompson came up to me and said, ‘you are not defined by the Olympics you are defined by the world record'.

"He helped put things in perspective for me and I enjoyed a good night. I had to accept I was never got to stand on top of the Olympic podium, but I was up against maybe the best athlete in history in my event.”