Dick Fosbury, Olympic champion who revolutionized high jump, dies at 76

Dick Fosbury, who won the 1968 Olympic high jump title using a new, back-first high jump technique known as the Fosbury Flop, died Sunday morning at age 76.

Fosbury died peacefully after a short bout with a recurrence of lymphoma, according to Schulte Sports Marketing & Public Relations, which had represented him.

Fosbury was first diagnosed with cancer in 2008.

Fosbury began working on his “flop” high jump technique as a high school sophomore in Medford, Oregon, and had it fully developed by graduation.

“I converted the old ‘scissors’ style, where a jumper would hurdle over the bar, and their legs would do a scissor kick,” he said in a 2017 interview for the NBC Sports film “1968” on the Mexico City Olympics. “I changed that style and modernized it to make it more efficient.”

He said he first used it an April 1963 meet, soon after turning 16 years old.

“Up until that time, my coach had been trying to teach me to use the straddle technique. My results were terrible. I was the worst guy in the entire district in the high jump,” Fosbury said. “I improved a half a foot that day just by changing my body position from sitting over the bar into a back layout.”

In the mid-1960s, Fosbury estimated that 95% of high jumpers used the western roll or straddle technique, where an athlete would throw an arm and a leg over the bar and go over on their belly.

“When we first saw him [doing the flop], we were saying, ‘Oh man, what a nutcase here with this guy,'” 1968 Olympic silver medalist Ed Caruthers said in 2017. “I’ve seen some unorthodox styles of jumping before, and none of them panned out.”

Happy birthday to Dick Fosbury, the man who changed high jump forever.