There are images of the sport that remain for history, and that of Richard Douglas Fosbury jumping backwards in the Mexico-68 Olympic Games is one of them. The man who revolutionized the high jump died on Sunday, as announced by Ray Schulte, a family friend, due to a relapse in lymphoma diagnosed in 2008. He turned 76 on the 6th.
Dick Fosbury, a young man from Portland, Oregon, He stunned the world at the age of 21 when he was proclaimed Olympic champion with the style named after him, ‘Fosbury flop’, in the Olympic final. He surprised by his style and by the mark, 2.24, with which he set a new Olympic record, and took gold ahead of his compatriot Ed Caruthers (silver) and the Soviet Valentin Gavrilov (bronze). In the Black Power Olympics, of sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith with raised fists and a black glove on the 200m podium, and Bob Beamon’s prodigious 8.90 long jump, a young blond man also claimed his spot on the the highest ranking in Olympic history.
Dick Fosbury ?? (1947-2023) has passed away, the man who reinvented the high jump in Mexico 1968 and one of the great names in the history of athletics: https://t.co/uc0kvEa8IF He had just turned 76 years old. D.E.P pic.twitter.com/WLCMpF9rd0
— Miguel Calvo (@MiguelCalvo_A) March 13, 2023
Dick Fosbury did it at the peak of an athletic career that began at a very young age and in which he soon began to experiment with his peculiar technique. Tall (1.93), his long legs did not help him practice the prevailing ventral roll. But not even the mockery and jokes that his style deserved in his school days daunted him. He went about his business and at age 16 he focused exclusively on developing and improving the ‘Fosbury flop’ that led him to Olympic glory.
The world legend is probably used too often. Dick Fosbury was a true LEGEND! He changed an entire event forever with a technique that looked crazy at the time but the result made it the standard. https://t.co/4qx0WQ08pu
—Michael Johnson (@MJGold) March 13, 2023
Not even he imagined then that his technique was going to become a revolution protected by the premiere of foam mats in Mexico to alleviate the impact of the fall, and the disappearance of the sand pit. It was a radical transformation that little by little left for the athletic archive that of the ventral roller, facing the bar, with such famous names as that of the Soviet Valery Brummel, holder of the world record since 1963 with 2.28, a height that Fosbury never surpassed. . On 2.24 of October 20, 1968 in Mexico it was the mark of his life.
short-lived athletic career
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But Fosbury did not go down in history because of his Olympic record but because of the indelible mark of a revolutionary, of a pioneer. He also had a short-lived athletic career. He concluded it when he could not qualify in the ‘trials,’ the United States selection tests, for the Munich-72 Games. He then resumed his university studies and He graduated in civil engineering. A man of progressive convictions, he had a brief political stage in the Democratic Party.
After Mexico-68, the majority of jumpers progressively decided on their style, absolutely hegemonic today. In Spain there were those who alternated between the two styles. Martí Perarnau was an Olympian in Moscow-80 with the ventral roller, which he maintained until his retirement in 1985, after experiencing a season with the ‘Fosbury flop’ 10 years earlier.