Specifically, “A main component of technique is pushing the envelope with how close to the edge of the board the athlete can jump from”. I don’t give a crap about some contrived, insular “technique”. It’s called the long jump - so who jumped the longest? All the faults made it boring.

High jump is different. There is a need to ensure that the jumper’s entire body gets over a certain height at a certain point in space, especially with the adoption of the Fosbury flop. I suppose technology could be devised to measure the highest point in free space that a jumper’s entire body clears but it would be much more complicated and non-intuitive. Pole vaulting requires a pivot point to lever the pole - it’s nothing like the other two. Measuring long jump from point to point is extremely straightforward.

I saw some weightlifting yesterday. Saw a woman lift an enormous weight over her head only to hear that judges (WTF?) had ruled that the lift didn’t count. Why the hell would judges be needed in weightlifting? It’s pretty damned easy to tell if the weight got up. I can see requiring other to be held for a couple of seconds, which this woman did. But her elbow apparently wobbled a minute amount despite objectively evidencing maintenance of the bar above her head. It takes a great deal of the fun out of the sport for the vast majority of people, except those who have made the sport part of their identity, who almost always ruin their chosen sport in an ill-advised effort to demonstrate the “beauty” and/or “nuances” of it.

It’s like all of the silly hand motions in gymnastics. My daughter is a fairly serious gymnast (light years from Olympic level) and she agrees with me that the hand waving is dumb. Judging by her consistent facial expression during the “jazz hands” portions of her routines, we think Melnikova agrees with us. Just do the actual moves - the higher the degree of difficulty the better. Require sticking the landing? Objective and makes sense. Hand waving? Perfunctory and silly.

And both can jump the 9 ft gap with a foot to spare but one jumps 2 feet early - you do the math breh. It’s a functional event that’s why there’s an edge. Same thing with high jump. It’s supposed to replicate a challenge in real life.

You rightly explain why this event is different from other events and so is possible to change the rules to accomplish what you perceive as the chief objective.

Sure the technique has been part of the sport because that's the only fair way of measuring it. But working an umpire or ref is part of a lot of sports. And I appreciate that. But in the end, I just want the call to match what the player did. I would have no issue using technology to measure the furthest jump. There's still plenty of room for technique.

However, faults do make for better television. You know exactly when they'll take off. There is drama in seeing if they'll fault as they're trying to push the envelope. There are still good reasons for wanting it. But I agree doesn't best accomplish the objective of seeing how far someone can jump. If the event were created today (HA! It would never be created today if it didn't already exist) I would guess they would just give a range from which you need to lift off and they would use the technology to measure.

These athletes practice days and years on end to become Olympians, how come they haven't perfected a starting run that has them leaping off the block in the correct spot each time?

Also, how does one start doing the triple jump?

would you Andy, but you are dead wrong.

"I could jump over that thing" is much more fun than I can jump "X far" or "X high"

…them something to jump over. I’m thinking a fire or crocodile pit. That would indeed be more interesting. A quite material portion of jumps being negated on a technicality? Not more interesting.