Mike Conley spent most of the 1980s ranked among the top triple jumpers in the world. So, heading into the U.S. Olympic trials in '88, there was very little thought given to the idea he wouldn't finish in the top three and make the trip to Seoul.
In a sport embedded inside an Olympic world where gold medals can be won and careers can be made by the most minuscule of fractions of seconds or inches or centimeters what toppled Conley's hopes had nothing to do with a measuring tape.
It was a pair of baggy shorts, the likes of which he had never worn in a track meet before, that did him in. Conley recalls video replays that showed the breeze that was kicked up by the vented flaps on the sides of his shorts created a barely perceptible mark in the sand nearly a foot behind where he landed.
Officials measured Conley's jump from the mark the shorts made. It cost him precious centimeters and he finished fourth, one spot out of the Olympics.
Devastating, the now-61-year-old dad of ...
