#16 1968 · Dick Fosbury · Athleticsreframe
Fosbury jumped over the bar backwards — the rules never said which way to face
the problem
High-jump technique had plateaued; Fosbury couldn't win with the straddle everyone taught
background
As an Oregon teenager, Dick Fosbury could not clear competitive heights with the straddle technique every coach taught. From 1963 he began bending his scissors jump backward, arching over the bar spine-first — a form coaches ridiculed and one newspaper called an airborne seizure. Crucially, foam landing pits had only just replaced sawdust: the technique's precondition had existed for barely a few years.
The rules of the high jump had never specified which way a jumper should face. Nobody had looked at that door, because landing on your neck in sawdust was its own rule.
the move
He reinvented the jump itself: curved run-up, back to the bar, landing on foam that had only just been invented. Legal all along; unthinkable until seen.
the payoff
Olympic gold in Mexico City 1968; within a decade virtually every elite jumper flopped. The canonical proof that the door was always open.
what came after
Fosbury took gold in Mexico City 1968 at 2.24m, and within a decade virtually every elite jumper in the world had switched. The Flop is the cleanest recorded case of a legal move nobody had thought to try — the door was open the whole time.
references
- [1]Fosbury FlopWikipedia, 2026en.wikipedia.org
- [2]Dick Fosbury, high jump revolutionaryOlympics.com, 2023olympics.com