A Historic Flop

I'll be honest.  I don't know how to high jump.  I mean, I know how to do it.  I just could never get my body to bend that way, so I've never been physically able to do it!  And, because I can't arch my back, every time I tried to high jump in practice or competition, I ended up doing it the old-school, leg-first way.  So, I have the utmost respect for those who actually, you know, can high jump!

The high jump, of course, was changed forever because of a man named Dick Fosbury.  At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, he tried this unorthodox new method.  Instead of taking a short approach and running directly at the bar, he ran up from much further away and at an angle.  He then launched himself headfirst over the bar.  It was laughed off as a curiosity.  Until he went higher than everybody else and won the gold medal!

It didn't take too long for the Fosbury Flop to not just become commonplace, but the standard.  Four years later in Munich, 28 of the 40 men's high jumpers did it Fosbury's way (although, the gold medalist, Juri Tarmak of the Soviet Union still used the straddle technique).  And soon you wouldn't see anything else.  (I was watching some of the 1984 Olympics on YouTube and there was a Chinese guy using the old technique.  He might be the last world-class high jumper not to Fosbury Flop.)

To be fair, Fosbury wasn't the only one experimenting with a new way to high jump in the mid-60s.  Canadian Debbie Brill was developing her "Brill Bend" around the same time, and several other men were working on similar techniques then, too.  And, it should be noted, they were only able to even think about it because the high jump landing area had recently been changed to foam, making the head-first approach possible (it would've been unsafe to even try on the sawdust and sand that preceded the foam mats).

But Fosbury's the one who did it for all the world to see on the Olympic stage.  And he won the gold medal.  So, he gets the credit.  It will forever be known as the "Fosbury Flop."  And it didn't just revolutionize the event.  It revolutionized the entire sport.

He was already known for his unique jumping style long before Mexico City.  Fosbury developed the technique in high school, and it was generating headlines as early as 1964.  He was on the cover of Track & Field News in February 1968 and won the NCAA Championship that year.  So, track & field people already knew about it.  Once the world saw it, though, and saw how effective it was, high jumping would never be the same!

There are very few people who've ever left such a big legacy.  He literally changed the entire way an event is done!  There's only one track & field event where the most common technique is named after a person!  Dick Fosbury's name will always be a part of the sport!  In track & field, that's simply unheard of!

In fact, there are very few athletes in any sport who can make that claim.  Some gymnasts have had skills named after them, but I think the closest comparison is figure skating.  Most of the figure skating jumps are named after the skater who first performed them (Axel, Lutz, Salchow).  I'm sure there are some other examples in different sports, too.  But in track & field, there's one.  Dick Fosbury and the Fosbury Flop.

What's ironic is that while his place in track & field history is secured, that was never Fosbury's intent.  He simply wanted to be competitive.  He couldn't get the hang of it any of the other ways, so he figured he'd try something new.  And it worked!  His coaches hated it (since it went against everything they taught him) until they saw how much his results improved.  Eventually, they accepted that his way was better.

Although, while he may not have set out to make history, he sure accepted his place in it.  "I introduced the entire world to a different way to clear the bar," he once said to NBC.  "The crowd loved it.  The coaches hated it.  They didn't like some guy coming in with something that was different and beat them."  

Incredibly, he never held the world record.  His gold medal-winning jump of 2.24 meters in Mexico City set an American and Olympic record, but Fosbury failed three times at breaking the world record.  That record wouldn't fall until 1971, and Dwight Stones would break Fosbury's Olympic record five years later in Montreal.  (The current men's high jump world record of 2.45 meters, which is more than 8 feet, was set by Javier Sotomayor in 1993, while the current Olympic record is Charles Austin's 2.39-meter jump in 1996.)

That 1968 U.S. Olympic men's track & field team is legendary.  Some consider it the greatest in history.  That was the Olympics of Bob Beamon.  The Olympics of Tommie Smith & John Carlos.  The fourth of Al Oerter's four straight discus titles.  And the Olympics of Dick Fosbury.

Steve Prefontaine will always be Oregon's favorite son, but there's another local hero whose impact on the sport extends far greater.  For the past 55 years, "Dick Fosbury" has been a household name.  There's a statue of him at his alma mater, Oregon State, where he's, naturally, in mid-jump, with everything but the bottom of his legs already over the bar. 

Dick Fosbury, who died of lymphoma on Sunday, is one of the most influential athletes ever to compete in the sport of track & field.  He will never be forgotten.  His legacy will be felt every time a high jumper launches themself towards the bar head first.  All thanks to Dick Fosbury.