If you have ever seen a track meet at school or on TV, you might have seen the High Jump event. High Jump is a Track event where people jump backward over a bar. But why do they jump like this?

Well, it all started with Dick Fosbury. An American retired high jumper, who is considered one of the most influential and inspirational athletes in the history of Track And Field. Besides winning a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics, he revolutionized the high jump event, with a different “back-first” technique, now known as the Fosbury Flop, adopted by almost all high jumpers today. His idea was to sprint diagonally towards the bar, then curve and leap backward over the bar.

High School

Fosbury, who was born in Portland, Oregon, first started experimenting with a better high jumping strategy at age 16, while going to school at Medford High School, Fosbury had struggles competing using the leading high jumping techniques of the period. In his Sophomore year, he wasn’t able to complete jumps of 5 feet, the qualifying height for many high school track meets. The leading technique, the straddle method (also called the scissor kick), was a hard motion where an athlete went over the high jump bar facing down and lifted his legs individually over the bar. Fosbury found it difficult to coordinate all the motions involved in the straddle method, and began to experiment with other ways of doing the high jump.

College

After graduating from Medford High School, he enrolled at Oregon State University in Corvallis. This is also the school that my grandpa went too, and he said, “Everybody who saw his weird flop thought he was crazy for not going with the standard scissor kick and would tease him and tell him he would never make it anywhere, and look where he ended up”. The school’s coach, Berny Wagner, believed that Fosbury would eventually reach greater results using the roll and convinced him to continue practicing the old technique through his Freshman year, although he was allowed to use the “flop” in Freshman meets. The debate over the technique came to a stop during Fosbury’s Sophomore year, when he cleared 6 feet 10 inches in his first meet of the season, shattering the school record. The national sports media began to take notice of the jumper from Oregon with the unusual style. He was on the cover of Track and Field News February 1968 issue. Fosbury won the 1968 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) title using his new technique, he also won the first of two consecutive titles, as well as the United States Olympic Trials.

Fosbury At The Olympics

Fosbury ended up going to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Mexico. This is where Fosbury ended up revolutionizing the “flop” when he won the gold medal for High Jump, showing how his “flop” could be better than the standard. It also inspired almost everyone to give Fosbury’s “flop” a try, also his “flop” adopted the name “The Fosbury Flop”. In conclusion, Fosbury taught everyone that you can do anything by following your dreams and making your own path.