quantumleap
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He revolutionized his even in Track & Field. It will never be the same.
Dick Fosbury, who revolutionized high jumping with his back-first approach to the bar and won a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, died on March 12 in Ketchum, Idaho. He was 76.
Fosbury suffered from a recurrence of lymphoma, according to a statement his agent posted to Instagram.
In high school in Medford, Oregon, a small city in the southern part of the state, Fosbury tried basketball and football (he was mediocre at both) in addition to high jumping. When he started the event, he used first the scissors and then the straddle, the prevailing techniques at the time.
As he progressed through high school, he found that by scissoring and “laying out more,” as he told Sports Illustrated, he could go higher and higher. As a junior, he cleared 5 feet, 10 inches, and the summer after he graduated from high school, with his unique style, his back flat over the bar, he jumped 6 feet, 7 inches.
In the fall of 1965, Fosbury, who was a skinny 6-foot-4, went to Oregon State University, where he would go on to win two NCAA titles in high jump. In 1968, he qualified for the Olympics in October in Mexico City. There, in a competition that went on for nearly four hours, he was one of two jumpers left with the bar at 2.24 meters (7 feet, 4 and 1/4 inches).
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Dick Fosbury, who revolutionized high jumping with his back-first approach to the bar and won a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, died on March 12 in Ketchum, Idaho. He was 76.
Fosbury suffered from a recurrence of lymphoma, according to a statement his agent posted to Instagram.
In high school in Medford, Oregon, a small city in the southern part of the state, Fosbury tried basketball and football (he was mediocre at both) in addition to high jumping. When he started the event, he used first the scissors and then the straddle, the prevailing techniques at the time.
As he progressed through high school, he found that by scissoring and “laying out more,” as he told Sports Illustrated, he could go higher and higher. As a junior, he cleared 5 feet, 10 inches, and the summer after he graduated from high school, with his unique style, his back flat over the bar, he jumped 6 feet, 7 inches.
In the fall of 1965, Fosbury, who was a skinny 6-foot-4, went to Oregon State University, where he would go on to win two NCAA titles in high jump. In 1968, he qualified for the Olympics in October in Mexico City. There, in a competition that went on for nearly four hours, he was one of two jumpers left with the bar at 2.24 meters (7 feet, 4 and 1/4 inches).
