Faster Higher Smarter: Bright Ideas That Transformed Sports
Chapter 1 HIGH JUMP THE FOSBURY FLOP Summer Olympics Mexico City October 1968 An energetic crowd turns out to watch the final day of track and field Although they don’t know it yet they are in for a wild ride The Olympic Committee declares that the high jump final will start at a height of 6 feet 6 inches This is quite low for an international competition and the decision guarantees the crowd a long event plenty of time as it turns out to notice the guy with the awkward-looking style Instead of running straight toward the bar and jumping over sideways like everyone else this athlete runs in a curve and ends up alongside the bar Then he jumps over backwards with his head first landing on his shoulders And that isn’t all before his run he rocks from one foot to the other forward and back forward and back for what seems like forever And why is he wearing one black shoe and one white At first the crowd laughs whenever he takes his turn but before long the laughs turn to cheers and the crowd knows the strange competitor’s name Dick Fosbury In high jump three failures in a row and you’re out By the fifth round of this competition five of the 13 finalists are gone and Fosbury is one of only two jumpers who haven’t missed a single jump Rounds six through Dick Fosbury on his way to a gold medal in the Mexico City Olympics 6
eight eliminate another five Fosbury and his American teammate Ed Caruthers remain along with Russian Valentin Gavrilov The nationalities of the final three are no sur prise to fans of the sport since 1887 only American or Russian jumpers have held the world record All three men make 7 feet 3 inches in round nine Then Gavrilov fails three times in round 10 with the bar at 7 feet 4 inches Caruthers makes it on his second attempt and Fosbury on his first He has yet to miss a single jump Round 11 both jumpers fail their first two attempts at 7 feet 4 inches Fosbury readies himself for his third try rocking back and forth focusing on the jump Then comes his unique run curving to the right and liftoff he sails over the bar with inches to spare When Caruthers fails his third attempt the gold medal is Fosbury’s and high jump competitions have a whole new look GOOD BETTER BEST Dick Fosbury’s strange style took the high-jumping world by storm By the next Olympic Games four years later most high jumpers were using what had become known as the Fosbury flop But what did it replace Before Fosbury captured the imagination of the public and his competitors in Mexico City there were two other jumping styles The SCISSOR JUMP is a simple style where you take off on the outside foot farthest from the bar and lift first one leg then the other over the bar Ethel Catherwood training at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam Born in North Dakota she competed for Canada Catherwood won the gold medal for high jump 7
The STRADDLE JUMP is more efficient than the scissor All of the jumpers in Mexico City except Fosbury were using this style You take off from the inside foot lift the outside leg and roll over the bar facedown the middle as you’d expect but the donut is different There the center of mass is located in the hole not in the actual donut itself WHY IT WORKS To complete a successful high jump you have to tackle two problems get the middle of your body as high off the ground as possible and arrange all the dangly bits those pesky arms and legs to work to your advantage First things first height This part is actually simple When you jump you just push off as hard as possible simple but certainly not easy Understanding the dangly bits Not so simple First you have to know about center of mass That’s the scientific name for middle of your body Locating an object’s center of mass is easy if we’re talking about a simple shape see diagram With a block or a ball the center of mass is right smack in 8 Center of mass
The FOSBURY FLOP is a very efficient jumping style You take off on the outside foot twist your body and go over the bar backwards arching your back as you do Something similar happens with the human body Your center of mass changes depending on your posture Stand up straight and your center of mass is in your stomach Lift your arms and it moves up a little And if you bend over your center of mass drops and is located outside your body So suppose you jump hard enough to raise your center of mass to a height of five feet Does that mean you can clear a bar set at that level Not necessarily The height you can actually clear depends on how you arrange those dangly bits in other words your jumping style 9
