Dick Fosbury, the Fosbury Flop and four other techniques that revolutionised sport
Dick Fosbury, who passed away on March 12, was a true sporting pioneer. With the development of a new technique that became known as the “Fosbury Flop,” the American high jumper turned his sport on its head.
When Fosbury demonstrated his new technique of jumping backwards off the wrong foot and arching his body over the bar during his 1968 gold medal campaign in Mexico City, he sparked a revolution in his sport.
By Munich 1972, 28 of the 40 high jump competitors had introduced the Fosbury Flop, and the last time the previously ubiquitous straddle technique was used at an Olympics was in Seoul 1988.
Fosbury was literally a game changer.
While it’s difficult to think of another single athlete who has had such a lasting impact on the way a sport is played, there are others whose innovations have created “before” and “after” moments that are theirs changed disciplines forever.
Here are five groundbreaking techniques that have revolutionized the sport.
Fosbury revolutionized the high jump in Mexico in 1968
The Fosbury Flop: The technique that changed the high jump forever
Before Mexico City 1968, the straddle jump was the dominant high jump technique at the Olympic Games. It involved an athlete who would leap face forward and twist his body in the air to work his way over the bar.
But a young American named Dick Fosbury preparing to change the sport forever.
Fosbury wasn’t a natural at jumping high – at least not when he used the straddle jump. As a schoolboy, he hadn’t even made the high jump team at his local track club.
But in 1963 he began developing a new technique that involved a backward jump that allowed athletes to use the natural arch of their backs to move over the high jump bar.
In Mexico City in 1968 – against what the Athletics News described as “the toughest field ever” – Fosbury introduced his new technique to the world and set the Olympic record en route to gold.
Today, the “Fosbury Flop,” as the technique came to be known, is the only type of jump used by athletes in the Olympics. And it’s all thanks to Fosbury’s innovation some 60 years ago.
The triple axel
The Axel: The gold standard of figure skating is jumping
While today’s figure skating fans are used to seeing and even witnessing triple variations of the Axel Ilyan Malinin Landing the first quadruple axel in competition at the 2022 CS US Classic, the axel remains the oldest, most famous, and arguably the toughest jump in ice skating history.
The jump, which is the easiest to identify due to its unique forward bounce aspect, is named after its inventor, Axel Paulsena Norwegian skater who first performed it at a competition in Vienna in 1882.
Over the years, Axel has evolved with the US Dick button (1948 Winter Olympics) and Carol Heiss (1953) were the first male and female skaters to land a double axel in competition. Vern Taylor at the 1978 World Championships in Ottowa a Ito Midori (1988 NHK Trophy), were the first to land triple axels in competition ahead of Malinin’s historic quad last year.
Despite these iterations, the axel remains a myth in the sport and a staple for any serious skater, as a double or triple axel must be performed in the short program and free skate segments of all International Skating Union events.
Natalia Yurchenko: Watching Simone Biles raise the level on vault brought tears of joy
The Yurchenko: The Vault That Transformed Gymnastics
It’s hard to quantify the impact Natalia Jurchenko‘s new vaulting technique had conquered the gymnastics world after the Soviets introduced the eponymous technique at a competition in Moscow in 1982.
The vault involves a round onto the springboard, followed by a backhand vault onto the platform, with the gymnast pushing off the top to complete somersaults of varying difficulty – from double somersaults to triple twists. The groundbreaking aspect resulted from the backward entry, which generated more power compared to the previous most popular vault, the Tsukahara, which required a forward entry.
Both men and women compete in this skill, with the double twist being the jump most frequently competed at international level. However, the difficulty increases.
2021, at the US Classic in Indianapolis, gymnastics legend Simone Biles became the first woman to compete in the Yurchenko Double Pike, a jump few men complete due to its added difficulty – and danger – of flipping twice in a pike position before landing on your feet.
Biles, a four-time Olympic gold medalist, performed the vault to great acclaim, but none of this would have been possible without the brilliance and bravery of Yurchenko, whose invention of vaulting took her sport to a whole different level.
Earvin N’Gapeth and the fake volleyball spike that stunned opponents
While the famous “spike” technique first appeared in volleyball in the Philippines in the early 20th century, it is a more recent innovation from France Earvin N’Gapeth has often made opposing teams ponder: The Fake Spike.
After leaping in the air and looking for all the world to hit the ball off the ten-foot line, N’Gapeth instead morphs into a setter, passing the ball to a free teammate as the block goes to Doomed to fail Opponent has already jumped.
This technique changed the game in volleyball, as opposing defenses don’t know whether to defend an approaching spike or turn their attention to teammates waiting in the wings to receive a pass.
While many believe N’Gapeth invented the technique and first used it at his club Modena in 2017, he was certainly the player who perfected the trick, with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic champion’s ability to conceal his bold intentions in ways, which is difficult – if not impossible – to read.
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Rodney Mullen’s Kickflip: A Revolution in Skateboarding
The kickflip trick is a skateboarding staple that often separates the budding amateur from seasoned veterans. And while a version of the kickflip (at least in name) existed before that Rodney Mullen When he introduced it to the world, it paled in importance next to the groundbreaking trick the legendary American invented.
Mullen’s kickflip, in which the skateboard is launched into the air so that it rotates 360 degrees before the skater lands back on the surface, was so fascinating at the time that it was originally called “The Magic Flip” because other skaters simply couldn’t work out what was going on.
In fact, the skater was not a well-rehearsed invention by Mullen, but had first performed the trick entirely by accident. “I just pushed the board away from me and it was like it was taunting me, it rolled over and landed on its wheels,” he told skateboarding website The Berrics in an interview about the first time he landed a kickflip .
From that happy moment, he set about perfecting a technique that has now become synonymous with skateboarding and will undoubtedly be used for the second time at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Over the years there have been many other new techniques that have revolutionized the sport as pioneering athletes find new ways to advance their discipline.
Other examples include the Panenka penalty in football (invented by a Czech footballer Antonin Panenka), the two-handed backhand in tennis (which is said to have been invented by Italy’s Giuseppe “Beppe” Merlo), stages in cycling and the “rip entry” in diving.
But perhaps none of them can match the impact Fosbury had when he turned the rules of his sport backwards with the Fosbury flop in Mexico City in 1968.