Senior high jumper Harris climbs the world rankings with Heps performance

Tora Lian-Juin Harris can jump over your head.

Doesn't matter who you are, he can do it. In fact, depending on your height, the senior could probably do it from just a few feet back. The farther back, the higher the jump. From the around 100 feet back allotted in an official competition, Harris can throw his body almost eight feet into the air, his best mark to date being the seven feet, seven inches (2.31m) leap he made last weekend to win the high jump at the Heptagonal Championships.

The second place jump was 6-9, almost a foot shorter.

Such results do not come simply with natural talent, or physical strength, though both are required. A mechanical engineering major, Harris combines the two with an academic intensity, focusing on and dissecting every one of his performances in an effort to fine-tune his technique.

"I look at it as kind of like a job," said Harris. "You have to understand where your strengths are and where your weaknesses are. It's not just about physical strength, you can train a monkey to be strong."

Such a focus has brought him to where he is now: About to graduate from the nation's best university, and second in the world in the high jump. That's right, in the world. After placing fourth in last year's outdoor NCAAs, Harris went on to finish as the best college competitor in the open national tournament and won a bronze medal in the World University Games in China.

This year his increased concentration and focus on the minutiae of his technique have brought even better results, including victories in both indoor and outdoor Heps, and a first place finish in indoor NCAAs.

A resident of suburban Atlanta, Harris grew up aware of his talent. He joined the track team in middle school and gravitated towards the high jump, where he found he could win almost unconsciously. He also enjoyed success as a place-kicker on the football team, so much so that he was heavily recruited as a kicker by many colleges, including Princeton.

When he came here, recruited in combination for track and football, Harris had a brief stint as an outside linebacker before devoting himself to excelling at the high jump.

"I had to stop playing football because I didn't want to get injured," said Harris. "Like on the first day of performance testing [freshman year], Coach bought ankle braces for everyone. I didn't wear mine, since I'd never had any injury problems. Then, after running some sprint drills, I turned my ankle the next drill."

Since then, Harris had committed himself entirely to improving his performance in the high jump. Working out, staying healthy, and, most importantly, analyzing his form.

"It's like golf," said Harris. "Tiger Woods is a strong guy, but he's not as big as some of those guys out there. It's all in his form. The high jump is running 100 feet, and what matters at the end is only about a centimeter."

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To focus on those all-important final centimeters, Harris employs a variety of training aids, including a thick binder of notes on his practices and videos of every competitive jump he's ever taken. He doesn't have one of his most recent efforts at Heps, however, since his camera was broken from being rewound and fast-forwarded so often.

As in the highest levels of most athletic competition, success is found by tweaking one's delivery, and Harris has certainly reached that level. He tried out for the Olympic squad in 2000, after taking a year off from Princeton, but finished seventh with a best mark of 7-3.5 (2.22m), just below the cut. Since then he has added nearly 10 cm to his personal record, a huge increase in the world of high jumping, and looks to improve even further.

"At Heps it felt like I cleared the bar by almost five centimeters," said Harris. "It was like 'Wow, this stuff really works.'"

After graduation, Harris looks to continue competing, and use that to finance an MFA in computer graphics and design. Computer design has always been one of his interests, in the scant time he has left to himself after his training and schoolwork. And, still on the horizon, there's the 2004 Olympics. With the rate of his current progress and improvement taken into account, he should be a formidable presence there.

After all, if he's second in the world now, who knows where another two years of training will put him? One can only say that his future looks golden.