The Teenager Who Reinvented the High Jump

Dick Fosbury was a 6-foot-4 sophomore at Medford High School in Oregon when he started failing to clear five feet, the qualifying height for most Oregon meets in 1963. He had been taught the upright scissors, an old-fashioned style that almost nobody used at the elite level anymore — the serious jumpers were on the straddle, where you went over the bar belly-down. Fosbury tried adapting the scissors instead. He kept his hips higher, twisted his shoulders, and by his junior year was clearing the bar with his back to it, head first. A local paper ran a photo in 1964 captioned "Fosbury Flops Over Bar." The name stuck.

The technique had been seen before — there is film of an athlete using a similar approach at the 1906 Olympics — but it had never been viable. Sand pits and shallow matting punished anyone who tried to land on their shoulders. The deep foam landing surfaces that came into wide use in the 1960s changed the math: you could land on your back without breaking it.

At the 1968 Mexico City Games, Fosbury cleared every height through 2.22 m without a miss, then jumped 2.24 m on his third attempt to win gold and set an Olympic record. Coaches around the world watched and shook their heads. The Mexico City crowd shouted olé as he cleared the bar.

Four years later in Munich, 28 of the 40 Olympic high jumpers used the flop. By 1980 the straddle was effectively extinct above the elite level. The technique that one Oregon teenager invented to save his qualifying time is now the only way anyone serious goes over a bar.