Two Olympic Leaps

Dick Fosbury could barely clear 1,5m in the high jump. A paltry height by high school standards for a sixteen year old. He used the scissors style where you go over the bar in a sitting position, one leg at a time and land on your feet. He had to improve, he had to do something different. Gradually he changed his style, tilting his hips higher and higher to a near horizontal position as he flew through the air. Many scoffed and ridiculed his attempts, some referred to his unorthodox leaps as  “airborne seizures”.

By his senior year in high school he turned backwards and leaped head first, arching his back as he went over the bar. By now he was breaking his high school record clearing more than 1,9m and he and came second in the State championships. He kept on working his technique, changing his run up to a curved one and taking off ever further from the landing mat to give him time to wrap his body over the bar as he went through the air.

Four years on, 1968,  and a crowd of eighty thousand in the Olympic stadium hushed, some laughed. Never had anyone seen this strange style with which Fosbury glided so easily and gracefully. The spectators watched as Fosbury went into the final four, then three, and then to the surprise of all, he became Olympic high jump champion with a record of 2,24m.

Today it is almost unthinkable that a high jumper would use any other style than the Fosbury flop. High jump at its essence is the effort to lift your center of gravity as high as possible above the ground. When doing the scissors style, the bodies’ center of gravity goes over the bar. Fosbury showed how to move your center of gravity under the bar while arching your back over the crossbar. By slow incremental steps which later became a poised glide, Fosbury pioneered the most innovative technique in modern day athletics.

At the same Olympics, another lanky athlete stood ready to make his first jump in the long jump competition. Bob Beamon knew he had a good chance of winning the event having jumped his best distance of 8,3m earlier in the season. But this jump had to be good. Taking his place at the end of the runway, he paused a full twenty seconds, breathing deeply and gathering his concentration. He took off, accelerated and leaped ……to stardom. 

“I felt alone,” he said. “I could not feel my legs under me I was floating.” At first the measuring instruments were not adequate as Beamon nearly cleared the sandpit. He knew his jump was good and when the distance was announced, he collapsed on the track from emotional shock. His competitors had to help him to his feet.  Beamon did not break the world record, he demolished it. At 8,9m his record was to stand for twenty two years. It was the perfect jump and it placed Bob Beamon in the Olympic history books forever.

Two leaps in the same year at the same place. 

Both moved the limits of what was thought possible.