Dick Fosbury: The life of a sporting revolutionary

Dick Fosbury demonstrates his technique in 1968. Photo / Getty Images

Dick Fosbury, the American athlete who has died aged 76, revolutionised the high jump when he introduced the headfirst, skywards-facing technique that became known as the “Fosbury flop”.

The method, in which the athlete approaches in a curving run-up before turning and arching his back over the bar, saw Fosbury take gold at the 1968 Mexico City Games with a jump of 2.24m.

Initially, observers responded with amusement and some bafflement. The Los Angeles Times compared Fosbury’s rather ungainly style to “a guy being pushed out of a 30-storey window”, while Sports Illustrated thought he came towards the bar “with a gait that may call to mind a two-legged camel”.

There were also concerns about the dangers of landing with one’s head aimed towards the ground. “Kids imitate champions,” said Payton Jordan, the coach for America’s Olympic track team. “If they try to imitate Fosbury he will wipe out an entire generation of high jumpers because they will all have broken necks.”

Nonetheless, elite athletes were prepared to defy all warnings in pursuit of an advantage. Come the 1972 Munich Olympics, 28 of the 40 competitors were using the back-first technique. Schools and gyms across America had to introduce soft-landing areas to protect Fosbury imitators from injury.

Later studies by physicists found that while other techniques required the athlete’s whole body to clear the bar at the peak of the jump, going over Fosbury-style allowed the legs to be well below one side of the bar at the apex of the jump, while the head and shoulders were below the bar on the other side.

The athlete’s centre of gravity thus remained below the bar throughout, meaning that less energy was required to make a clean jump. But Fosbury had known nothing of the science at the time, relying instead on instinct and a determination to beat his own personal best.

His Olympic career was short-lived. Finding himself ill-equipped to deal with the attention that followed his 1968 victory, he failed to qualify for the Munich Games and retired from the sport, moving to Idaho to work as an engineer. “I was mentally exhausted,” he recalled. “I didn’t want to be on a pedestal. I received my medal and I wanted to be back on the ground with everyone else.”

But his technique has endured as the most popular high-jump method among professional athletes. The current world record of 2.45m, set by Javier Sotomayor of Cuba in 1993, was achieved using the Fosbury flop.

Richard Douglas Fosbury was born in Portland, Oregon, on March 6, 1947. His mother worked as a secretary and his father was a truck sales manager. Growing up in the city of Medford, he made it onto his high school’s basketball and American football teams, but proved too gangly and awkward to make much of an impression.

Having abandoned football after his front teeth were knocked out on the helmet of a fellow player, he turned instead to athletics, finding that, at 6 ft 4, he was physically well-suited to the high jump. At first he used the upright scissors method, approaching from a 30- to 50-degree angle and swinging the leg nearest the bar straight into the air. His coach then attempted to teach him the western roll - a kind of glorified hop in which the leg farthest from the bar lifts off first - but with little success.

By the age of 16, Fosbury could only achieve a mediocre 1.63m. He therefore experimented with raising his hips as he jumped, and found that this allowed him to add an extra six inches to his personal best. “That change made me competitive,” he said. He started leading with his shoulders, leaning back in mid-air and kicking his feet over as they followed.

In 1964 a photographer captured him in action at a local competition. The picture was published by The Medford Mail-Tribune with the caption “Fosbury flops over the bar”. Though the appellation stuck, Fosbury’s coach Berny Wagner remained dubious as to the move’s efficacy and even its legality, advising his charge to stick to the western roll for future competitions. Fosbury ignored him, and went on to win the championship of the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1968, repeating the victory the following year.

Despite his collegiate success, in the run-up to the 1968 Olympics Fosbury was in less than ideal shape, having compressed several vertebrae perfecting his jump (the X-rays were sufficiently alarming to get him out of military service in Vietnam); in the final Olympic trial he finished only third, just making the three-man team.

Yet as the Olympic final unfolded, on October 20 1968, all eyes turned towards the jump pit. Fosbury’s competitors were whittled down until only his fellow American Ed Carruthers remained.

The bar was raised from 2.22 m to 2.24 m – a new Olympic record. Both men failed to clear it on their first two attempts, but Fosbury sailed over on the third jump, while Carruthers came up short.

Fosbury’s Olympic performance was also notable for its lengthy warm-up process. He would rock on his heels for the full two minutes allowed before any attempt, rhythmically clenching and unclenching his fist. When he came to make his third (unsuccessful) bid to set a new world record of 2.29 m, the crowd began keeping time with him, entirely in his thrall.

He returned home to a flurry of media interest that proved difficult to sustain. He recreated his jump on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, but slipped over on the run-up, his usual shoes being unsuited to a studio floor.

By the end of the decade, he had taken up an offer to study Engineering at Oregon State University, graduating in 1972. He founded an engineering company in Blaine County, Idaho, and turned his hand to designing cycle and running paths for the local area. A keen snowboarder and mountain bike enthusiast, he also taught at athletics camps around the world.

Dick Fosbury, who died of lymphoma, was inducted into the US Olympic Hall of Fame in 1993. He married Robin Tomasi, who survives him, as does a son from a previous marriage and two stepdaughters.

Dick Fosbury, born March 6, 1947, died March 12, 2023.