I wanted to tell you about a kid named Dick Fosbury who
literally revolutionized the sport of High Jumping. He couldn’t do it the way they taught him to
do it, so he invented a way he could do it, and now everyone does it his
way.
Dick was a tall kid and average in every way. He wanted to be good at something so he could
get a scholarship and go to college to get an engineering degree. He tried Football, but he was just average
and only succeeded in getting his front teeth knocked out. He tried Basketball, and at 6’4” he should
have been great, but there were already several great players on his High
School team. They could dunk and he
couldn’t, so he just sat on the bench.
He tried other sports, but finally settled on Track and Field. His coach thought his height would give him
an advantage in the High Jump, but in every other event, he was just average as
usual.
As Dick tried to follow his coach’s instructions to perform
the high jump using the ‘Western Roll’ style, (and Dick was trying to follow
the instructions), he just couldn’t do it.
He was tall and lanky, uncoordinated and the several different motions
required were beyond his capabilities.
He was still jumping at the 5’4” height he had reached in 9th
grade using the ‘Scissors’ style! On the
long bus ride heading to another Track meet, he decided he’d try one more time
and if he couldn’t get it, he’d switch sports again. But he would do whatever it took to reach
something higher.
Fortunately, the schools had begun changing out the surfaces
behind the high jump pits. We are used
to seeing the 3 foot tall fluffy pads that are in use now. Back when Dick was jumping, the landing area
was sand and wood chips at ground level.
The Western Roll and the other styles forced the jumper to land on his
feet or face serious injury. Arriving at
this Rotary meet in Grand Pass Oregon, he saw that they had a high fluffy
pad. Desperate as he was to see
improvement, Dick knew he wouldn’t hurt himself trying something new.
His first jump, using the more
familiar Scissors technique, netted 5’4”, the standard he was trying to best or
quit. It wasn’t enough. His next jump, he leaned further back,
adjusting his body to try to better his jump.
It looked a bit odd, but he cleared two more inches. On his third jump, he leaned even further
back and made 5’8”.
When he took his next jump, the
bar was set at 5’10”, and he really wanted to make that height. This time he let his instincts take his body
adjustments further and when he jumped, he somehow was flat on his back now,
totally out of form and yet he made it!
He landed on his back and the coaches erupted. Was this legal? Was it safe?
Was it even allowed? It wasn’t
the Scissor or the Western Roll or any other traditional style he was
doing! He had improved his jump by a
half a foot in just 4 jumps, and everyone was paying attention. (Most improvements in the sport are noted in
fractions of an inch sometimes over the course of a whole year!)
Richard Hoffer of Sports Illustrated
wrote, “When Fosbury jumped 5'10" at that rotary meet at Grants Pass in
1963, he was in a back layout position, his shoulders going even farther back
in reaction to his lifting hips. It was on-site engineering, his body and mind
working together, making reflexive adjustments with only one goal, getting over
the bar. In an act of spontaneity, or maybe rebellion, he created a style unto
itself.”
Dicks coach was amazed, and not
unwilling to let Dick do it his way after seeing his remarkable
improvement. He gave Dick complete
freedom to experiment and the next year, Dick’s Junior year, he cleared
6’3”. By his senior year, Dick could
reach 6’5 ½”, well higher than his teammates.
It was still a local phenomenon, and Dick helped teach some of his
teammates how he was doing it. That was
hard to do, since he was really making it up as he went along.
At one of his Senior meets, a
reporter noticed his strange form. He
said it looked like a fish flopping onto a boat. His article gave the new style it’s name, the
Fosbury Flop. (Some said he looked like
he was having a seizure midair, or falling from a tall building.) People still
laughed at it, yet his jumps were much higher now. Dick had a high jump style named after him,
but colleges were not calling in droves.
After all, he really just wanted to get a scholarship to college
somehow. Fortunately, the local
university, Oregon State got him a small scholarship and Dick gratefully
accepted.
Dicks new college coach insisted
that he go back to the Straddle (a combination of the Western Roll and the
Scissor). Dick, always good at following
directions, did that. But his jumps went
back to his previous low levels. At
meets, sometimes Dick would revert back to his trademark jump and his heights
would jump too. In his Sophomore year,
at a meet in Fresno, he reached 6’10” using the Flop. His coach finally relented, seeing that he
had actually set an Oregon State University record. He pulled him aside and said, “Dick, I’m not
exactly sure what you are doing, but it’s working for you. So go ahead with it.” Finally Dick had support and backing to keep
refining this new technique.
Track meet promoters started
calling Dick and asking him to perform at their meets with the headline about
his new style. Some headlines noted that
he was a physics student refining a new technique. It drew more crowds and gave Dick more
opportunities to refine his form. In his
Junior year, he cleared 7 feet. Now he
was jumping at the heights of the Olympic class athletes! In fact, he became the most consistent 7 foot
jumper in the sport. After reaching
7’2”, someone asked him if he would be interested in competing in the
Olympics. Dick was stunned! He had never imagined anything like that, and
here he was, using his own strange and comical technique, successful enough to
consider Olympics!
Dick trained for and qualified
for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City with a jump of 7’3”. There, the long process of eliminating the
weaker jumpers demanded that they start the bar at 6’6”. The audience continued to laugh when they saw
Dick flop over the bar in his strange new style. By the time they reached 7’, only 5 jumpers
remained. Three were American and two
were Soviet, and as this was during the Cold War, they were arch enemies. The audience began to be won over by Dick and
cheer for him instead of laugh. After
four hours of competition, with the sun setting, after two misses at the 7’4
1/4”, Dick ran toward the bar just as the Marathoners were entering the
stadium. Normally, the audience would
begin cheering madly to see the racers finish this long race. But they were already on their feet cheering,
watching Dick make his last attempt at a new Olympic record. Dick cleared the bar, whipping the crowd into
a frenzy. He had set an Olympic Record,
earned a Gold Medal, all using a style he himself invented and fine-tuned.
No coach gave him any pointers; no other
athletes showed him the form. Finally
his style was recognized as the improvement over the older styles as it was. Even so, for several more years there were
skeptics. One coach warned that this technique
would wipe out an entire generation of high jumpers because they would all
break their necks. After the games, one
reporter wrote,
“When he did it tonight, Fosbury gave the world a spectacular
display. The people at Oregon State are studying hundreds of films of their
flying civil engineer in action, but so far nobody has figured out a way to
duplicate his style. It is totally unlike the scissorkick, the Western roll,
the Eastern cutoff and other techniques. Even Fearless Fosbury is amazed. ‘Sometimes
I see movies,’ he says, ‘and I really wonder how I do it.’ However, Fosbury foresees the day when boys
all over America will be soaring over bars upside-down. ‘I think quite a few
kids will begin trying it my way now,’ he said. ‘I don't guarantee results, and
I don't recommend my style to anyone. All I say is if a kid can't straddle, he
can try it my way.’”
Indeed, in the next ten years,
the Fosbury Flop became the common High Jumping style. No World Records have been set since 1980
using any other technique. Dick truly
changed this sport completely! He
developed a new style by listening to his body and working with his knowledge
and interest in Physics and Engineering.
He ignored the laughter of critics and did what worked for him with his
abilities and limitations.
We can do the same with our
challenges and abilities, we just need to think outside
of the box.
To read more, see:
“Fearless
Fosbury Flops to Glory” bOctober 20,
1968, New York Times, found at http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/sports/year_in_sports/10.20.html
This day in History, Oct 20, 1968:
“Fosbury flops to an Olympic record” at
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fosbury-flops-to-an-olympic-record
September 14, 2009, Sports Illustrated, “The Revolutionary: As a gawky teenager in the 1960’s, Dick
Fosbury just wanted to find something he was really good at. Little did he know he would become an Olympic
Champion and turn a sport literally upside down” by RICHARD HOFFER found at http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1160029/1/index.htm
Cornell University’s analyzes why
his technique works using Physics at http://thevirtuosi.blogspot.com/2011/08/physics-in-sports-fosbury-flop.html
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