James Beckford (athlete)

James Beckford ( born January 9, 1975 at Saint Mary Parish ) is a Jamaican long jumper.

At first he ran parallel to the triple jump, and on 20 May 1995, he scored in Odessa with 17,92 m a size with which he still occupies seventh place in the Eternal World Ranking (as of June 2012).

The breakthrough in the long jump he made in the same year at the World Athletics Championships in Gothenburg, where he won with a distance of 8.30 m silver. This made him one of the favorites at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where he was beaten only by the U.S. American legend Carl Lewis and won silver.

In 1997 he presented on April 5 in Orlando with 8.62 meters his personal best. End of June, he was positively getest at a meeting in Paris on the doping agent ephedrine and banned for three months. Shortly before the World Championships in Athens in August but its lock was shortened due to a rule change so that he could start and reached the fourth place.

At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney he failed, however, in the qualification. The following year he finished seventh at the World Championships in Edmonton, and at the 2003 World Championships in Paris / Saint- Denis, he won another silver medal, this time with a width of 8.28 m. At the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, he missed the bronze medal with 8.31 meters to a centimeter and finished fourth.

At the World Championships in Helsinki in 2005, he finished ninth at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka in sixth place.

James Beckford has a competition weight of 73 kg at a height of 1.83 m.