Dick Fosbury, an Olympic gold medalist excessive jumper recognized for revamping the technical self-discipline of the game, died Sunday, his publicist stated. He was 76.
Fosbury died after a recurrence of lymphoma, his publicist Ray Schulte stated.
The Oregon native was recognized for introducing the “Fosbury Flop” to the world of excessive bounce. In the 1968 Olympics, he used the revolutionary transfer to win a gold medal over fellow America Ed Caruthers and the Soviet Union’s Valeriy Skvortsov.
American excessive jumper Dick Fosbury clears the bar on his third try on the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City. Fosbury received the gold medal with this bounce, clearing 7 ft, 4 1/4 inches, which additionally set Olympic and American information. (Getty Images)
By the following Olympics, 28 of the 40 jumpers have been utilizing the method. The 1976 Olympics turned the ultimate Games the place an athlete would win with a method apart from the “Fosbury Flop.” Before Fosbury’s transfer turned the norm, excessive jumpers cleared the bar by working parallel to the bar, then utilizing a straddle kick to leap over earlier than touchdown with their faces pointed downward.
“The world legend might be used too usually,” Olympic legend Michael Johnson tweeted. “Dick Fosbury was a real LEGEND! He modified a complete occasion without end with a method that appeared loopy on the time however the consequence made it the usual.”
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FILE – Gold medal winner Dick Fosbury raises his arm on the victor’s podium of the Olympic stadium, Oct. 20, 1968, in Mexico City. (AP Photo/File)
Fosbury began to dabble with the method as a highschool athlete in Oregon. He took off at an angle, leaped backward, bent himself right into a “J” form to catapult himself over the bar and crash into the touchdown pit.
“I knew I needed to change my physique place, and that’s what began first the revolution, and over the following two years, the evolution,” Fosbury instructed The Corvallis Gazette-Times in 2014. “During my junior 12 months, I carried on with this new method, and every meet I continued to evolve or change, however I used to be bettering. My outcomes have been getting higher.”
Fosbury’s method was initially panned as he was described as a fish flopping in a ship. But he appreciated the identify “Fosbury Flop.”
“It’s poetic. It’s alliterative. It’s a battle,” he beforehand stated.
FILE – Dick Fosbury, of the United States, clears the bar within the excessive bounce competitors on the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. (AP Photo/File)
Fosbury was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1981.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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