BROXBOURNE, ENGLAND — In a few minutes, a group of at-risk kids from Colorado and England will be hearing Olympic icon Bob Beamon tell his remarkable story — how he went from being a juvenile delinquent in Harlem to obliterating the world record in the long jump at the 1968 Olympics.
But as they wait for him to arrive by train Wednesday at a Christian conference center 30 minutes north of London, Jesus Garcia of Eagle is talking about the eye-opening wonders he has seen since he arrived here Saturday.
Garcia is one of 18 youths visiting with Avon-based SOS Outreach. They’ve gone sightseeing, visited Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and attended Olympic events — beach volleyball, cycling, even tennis at Wimbledon. Garcia loved the volleyball.
“We saw guys and girls. It was amazing,” says Garcia, 17. “We had front-row seats.”
He also has learned about cultural differences, and not just that spectators chant differently here.
“Over here, they’re so fused with the races, they’re not all segregated,” Garcia said. “It made me happy. It doesn’t seem like there’s as much racism.”
SOS Outreach is all about helping kids see their world in a different way. It makes snowboarding, skiing and other sports available to those who otherwise might not be able to afford them, but it’s also about teaching “core values” of courage, discipline, integrity, wisdom and compassion.
SOS used to stand for Snowboard Outreach Society, but as it expanded into other activities, it took on a different meaning.
“International cry for help,” says founder Arn Menconi.
The SOS kids are here through the Foundation for Global Sports Development, which works with youth programs around the world and brings a few to the Olympics every two years. It’s hard to imagine a better speaker for them than Beamon, who couldn’t read when he was 14 years old and turned his life around with track and field.
“My world was in the ‘hood,” he says. “The ‘hood was gamblers and hustlers that I truly looked up to.”
He explains how he went to a school that was a “jailhouse for students that could not function in regular school settings. That meant that I was doing so much bad stuff that they had to lock me up during the day. What does lock up mean? That means when I came to school, they frisked me.”
But Beamon had the will to change.
“One day it suddenly hit me that I had to do something with my life,” Beamon says. “I was learning how to read and write. I wanted more out of life.”
At a Junior Olympics event, he discovered he had a remarkable talent for the long jump, jumping more than 24 feet. For the first time, he felt like he had accomplished something.
He got out of the lockdown school and into a normal one. Three Olympians — Donna de Varona, Wilma Rudolph and Ralph Boston — visited the school one day and gave him a dream to pursue.
“The message was, you must be motivated, you must be dedicated,” Beamon says. “They were saying, ‘You can do it, you can make it.’ “
Beamon made it his goal to compete in the 1968 Olympics, and there he set a world record that stood almost 23 years. It’s still the Olympic record.
Beamon is a mesmerizing speaker. The kids from Colorado and London sit in rapt attention as he describes his amazing jump of 29 feet, 2½ inches, which beat the existing world record by 21¾ inches.
He also tells them how to resist temptation and negative thinking.
“There are more unhappy people in this world than there are happy,” Beamon says. “You may be around someone that’s not happy, or they don’t feel good about themselves, but you have to have this very special kind of ESP. ‘I’m on a mission. Why would John Doe tell me to come over and smoke some weed?’ “
Beamon says tempters like that just want to bring other people down and share what they are feeling, “which is pain.”
These kids get just the opposite from SOS Outreach. They get positive reinforcement and passions to pursue.
“If you expose someone to something they’re passionate about — it could be anything intellectual, physical — then they’re inspired to do something bigger in their life,” Menconi says. “It’s not about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not making money. It’s about making sure you have the opportunity to be an agent of change.”
Megan Fregoso of Edwards gets that, and Beamon’s riveting speech resonates.
“He inspired me a lot, and I just keep on dreaming,” Fregoso says. “I think my dreams will come true if I keep trying without stopping, and always put 100 percent of myself in it.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616, jmeyer@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jmeyer26
