Poems and Songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. Who For What Runs.
Commentary to “The Long-Jumper’s Song”.
8 m 40 cm is about 27 ft 7 in, 8 m 60 cm is about 28 ft 3 in, 8 m 90 cm is about 29 ft 2 in, 8 m 7 cm is about 26 ft 6 in.
At the time of writing this song, the world record was 8 m 90 cm (it was set in 1968, at the Olympic Games in Mexico City, by the American black athlete Bob Beamon), but this result was considered phenomenal — the previous record was only 8 m 35 cm (27 ft 5 in).
“I’ll defeat America” is a very loose paraphrase of the quote from Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem “Americans Wonder” (1929) used in the original.
The presented text is adapted from George Tokarev’s translation.