A portrait of Dick Fosbury, the man who revolutionized the high jump with his Fosbury Flop. Fosbury passed away at age 76. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Dick Fosbury, the high school high jump amateur who went on to change the history of the high jump with his groundbreaking new jumping method, passed away on Saturday, March 12 at the age of 76 from a resurgence of lymphoma.
Dick Fosbury was born in Portland Oregon in 1946, and began training for the high jump during his time at Medford High School in Medford, Oregon. For several years, he had no luck with the two methods that were commonly used at the time: the scissor method, and the straddle method.
Fosbury did not start out as one of the greatest high jumpers at his school. “I was awful. Terrible. [My coach and I] got through most of the season with poor results,” Fosbury explained in an interview with Beckett Media (2018). His coach was having him focus on the straddle method, which yielded no results. He decided that he wanted to try the scissor method, and convinced his coach to let him give it a go. At the next meet, the results were instantly better. “I didn’t have a plan, but as the bar was raised higher I changed my body position to adapt to the higher bar – from sitting over the bar in the scissors to a back layout lying flat on my back,” explained Fosbury. “And I improved half a foot in that first meet that I changed.”
This meet marked the beginning of Fosbury’s rise to fame. After setting a school record at Oregon State University, he went on to win the NCAA title and a gold medal at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, setting a new Olympic record of seven feet, four inches with his new jumping technique, coined “The Fosbury Flop” by his peers and the media.
Unlike the previous high jump techniques, Fosbury’s method involved soaring over the bar backwards, after running parallel to the bar and turning their body away from it as they jumped. As their head and shoulders cleared the bar, their back formed an arch, curving over the barrier.
The physics behind the Fosbury flop is fairly simple. Because only one part of the athlete’s body is directly above the bar at one time and the rest of the body is curved below, the person’s center of mass is at or below the bar at all times. This shift in weight allows the athlete to clear the same height bar without jumping as high as the previous techniques.
The judges weren’t sure if this new method was even legal. Coaches and experts saw the approach as dangerous. People thought that Fosbury’s success was a fluke. But the Fosbury Flop spread like wildfire. Within a few years, it became mainstream, and used by professional athletes and beginners alike.
Dick Fosbury was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2008 and had a tumor removed near his spine shortly thereafter. In 2014 he stated that he was free of cancer, but his lymphoma surged back up, and he passed away on March 12 of this year. Despite his death, his legacy will live on forever through the jumps of countless athletes.
