Lenny Wilkens: Basketball's Underrated Coach

On March first, nineteen eighty eight, Kurt Browning of Canada was the first person ever to land a quadruple jump in competition at the World Championships. Now, a quadruple jump means four means four rotations in the air, which is the pinnacle of figure skating. And here is the history behind the quadruple jump today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. Now we begin in the late nineteen eighties is a pivotal era in figure skating. Skaters were pushing themselves to do more and more tricks that never been done before. And then a young Canadian skater, Kurt Browning, stepped onto the ice the nineteen eighty eight World champion in Budapest, hungry. There was a buzz as everyone had heard rumors that Kurt was going to try a quadruple toeloop. Now many of us may watch figure skating just every four years in the Olympics, So to know what a quadruple toe loop is, let me break down some of the different jumps there are in figure skating. So there's the toe loop where skater takes off from the back inside edge of one foot and leans on that same edge. There's a sal cow by taking off that same back inside edge and then landing on the side of the opposite foot. There's a loop where you take off the back outside edge and then land on that same foot. There's a flip where you take off on the back inside edge of one foot and land on the outside edge of that same foot. And there's a lutes, which is one of the more difficult ones, where skater takes off the back outside edge of one foot and lance is on the outside edge of the opposite foot. You know, those are just words and may be hard to understand, and honestly, when you watch these you may not actually realize the difference in them at first glance unless you are a avid figure skater, you've been in it, you've done it, or you watch it even more than every four years. But you know these jumps are impressive and you probably heard Salcal that is a famous skater back in the day, and it's a common one that is done. But the reason why this was important, and even though it was a total loop and not a soul cow, that doesn't matter which one is this was the very first quadruple jump, meaning he did four rotations in the air off a jump. Now Kurt wasn't just some random guy just going out there doing this jump and that was it. He was actually a four time world champion and Canadian national champion. Unfortunately, the best he ever did in the Olympics was fifth in nineteen ninety four. But that doesn't mean he was just some slouch. He was very good and it is very hard to be good every time the Olympics come around for four years. Sometimes your peak just doesn't fit there. But to understand the challenges and what went through to get to that point where we landed the first quadruple drop, which actually landed regularly now in major competitions, we have to go back even further to go to nineteen fifty seven when the first triple ax hole was done, which is three rotations, and this was done by David Jenkins, and this really set the whirl a blaze because before that it was thought to be impossible to do that, to have enough speed to spend three times. And then skaters kept pushing the envelope into the late seventies and early eighties. There was a small group of American skaters that took the plunge in attempting a quadruple jump that many thought would be impossible. I would compare it to Roger Bannister running the four minute mile. Everyone thought it was impossible to run a mile in another four minutes, but as soon as he broke that record, then within weeks other people had right under four minutes. It's the same here. Once it gets done, and once people know you can do it, then it continues to be done over and over again. There was an American skater named Robert Wackhoffer who was landing them in practice, and even Mark Cockroll was attempting them in competition by the year nineteen eighty three. And there was actually many skeptics in the sport that thought that just landing this trick wasn't actually technically sound and may not actually be something to score good in the judge's eyes, because it's just showing you can jump a lot, but it's more about the t technique you're doing and less about what you can do. But the US team and even other figure skaters, it is a small community and so they talk, they work together, They're in all these events across the world together, they know who's trying different tricks and who is getting close to landing these tricks. So it makes sense that Canada, someone that's very close to the US, also is working on landing the quadruple jump. But it's said that in nineteen eighty six at the European Championships that Joseph actually landed a trip a quadruple jump in that competition, but they review the tapes and he did not land it cleanly to be counted by the ISSU, the organization for figure skating. So many are you who actually landed it first? Now, Kurt Browning knows people are arguing about this, but he doesn't care. He knows that the Guinness OCO World Records in the ISU both gave him recognition for being the first person to land a quadruple jump, and that's all he needs and he doesn't care at all. Now, big jumps are normally attached to men in the figure skating world, but the quadruple jump is not just limited to women. In two thousand and two, Miko and Dou of Japan was the first woman to land a quadruple jump in international competition. Has since been landed multiple times and even in the Olympics. But as they keep pushing how much far they can go in the quadruple jump, scientists have actually studied this and they actually believe that a quadruple jump is the most that can actually be done by a human body. Now that doesn't mean that it is impossible, and there will always be someone to go for the quintuple jump, although it seems unlikely that it would ever be possible to be landed cleanly in count in competition. But for now, they're perfecting the quadruple jumps in both the men's and women's division and figure skating, and it's an exciting moment to see whenever we get to see these competitions. Thank you for joining us today on Daily Sports History. If you like this, please let us know and you might notice a little change to how the format is today and my voice is a little different. I'm going away from doing a radio style voice and doing more of my regular voice. I hope you like it. If you don't, if you like the previous way we were doing it, let me know. You can contact us at Daily Sports History at gmail dot com or on all our socials. Daily Sports History on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. We'd love to hear from you how you're enjoying the show. And I'm going to keep trying to improve what we're doing as we go on and learn more together every day and come back tomorrow for more day the Sports History m