Dick Fosbury, Olympic champion who changed high jump forever, dies aged 76

The American Olympic champion Dick Fosbury, who revolutionised the high jump with a technique that became known as the Fosbury Flop, has died. He was 76.

His former agent, Ray Schulte, announced the news on Instagram on Monday.

He wrote: “It is with a very heavy heart I have to release the news that longtime friend and client Dick Fosbury passed away peacefully in his sleep early Sunday morning after a short bout with a recurrence of lymphoma.”

Fosbury shot to fame in 1968, when he won high-jump gold in Mexico City after a final that lasted more than four hours.

His technique, honed in college competition in Oregon, involved jumping backwards and arching his back over the bar, thereby reversing and ripping up decades of high-jump orthodoxy. In the span of just five years, he had gone from struggling as a high-school athlete in his hometown, Medford, to winning worldwide fame.

In 2012, Fosbury told the Guardian he “had a horrible time dealing with all the attention” that followed his Olympic triumph.

“It was too much. I was a small-town kid who did something way beyond what I had ever expected to do. I liked the attention, but I wanted it to be over at a point. It didn’t work that way.”

He also said he became “mentally exhausted” because “there was too much attention. People put me on a pedestal and kept me there. 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.”

Elsewhere, however, Fosbury said the gold “changed my life. It brought me gifts, not necessarily monetary. I have met presidents and kings, seen the world and shared my life with wonderful people.”

Fosbury did not compete at the Olympics again but his technique swiftly came to dominate his sport.

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