Welcome to Random Explanations, in which I try to explain a matter, answer a question, or concoct a theory based on a reader's suggestion. This week, I had no idea what to explain. So I texted my friend T.J. and the conversation above led to this week's explanation: the Fosbury Flop.
I wonder about how things get started. What exactly goes through the mind of an innovator? Who was the first person to look at a chicken and say, "We should totally eat that thing"? And what did that person's friends think? They may have been supportive, but it's more likely that they said, "Steve, you're crazy. You want to eat that beak?" But Steve was not to be deterred and thanks to his innovation, my sons can play on an indoor playground while I eat a chicken sandwich with honey roasted barbecue sauce. Steve was a genius.
Dick Fosbury was a also genius. The high jump is one of the most straightforward events that there is. Who can jump the highest? You wouldn't think there would be a lot of nuance to it. And for a long time, there was not. For years, people would just run up to the bar, jump as high they could, and put their legs over the bar one at a time. This was known as the straddle technique. Yeah...that name is a bit suggestive. In fact, most of the techniques for the high jump during that time—including the Eastern cut-off and the Western Roll—sound like entries in a book entitled The Newlywed's Guide to Intimacy.
The trouble for Fosbury in the high jump was he was too tall. As a lanky teenager, he could not jump the traditional way and clear the minimum height for track meets. So he began to test out a new way of jumping in which his last few steps would be run in a curve which would turn his back to the bar. He would then leap over the bar backwards. That seems counterintuitive, but the jump turned out to be a great real world usage of physics.
Fosbury fine-tuned this new technique throughout high school and college. He began to clear greater and greater heights. But it looked really weird. Think about it: when you have seen people do something the same way over and over again for years and then suddenly someone does it in a completely different way, it takes you aback. It seems wrong. One historian described the new technique as an "airborne seizure." He was criticized by some in the press as being lazy. After jumping higher than all others in track meets, Fosbury would have to wait while judges determined whether his new way of doing things was even legal.
The Fosbury Flop took the Oregonian high jumper all the way to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. As Fosbury went about the high jump in such an unorthodox way, the crowd gasped. Yet they could not argue with his results. Fosbury was ultimately the last man standing, set a new Olympic record in the high jump, and won the gold medal (after the judges again deliberated whether the Flop was legal).
Today, the Fosbury Flop is the standard technique for the high jump. The same method that Dick Fosbury's coaches encouraged him to abandon is taught to young high jumpers all over the world. Imagine what would have happened if Fosbury got discouraged when he was too tall and awkward to do the high jump and just quit. Instead, he found a way to turn his problem into a new solution. He is like the Steve Jobs of the track and field world.
The origin of the Fosbury Flop is a fairly remarkable story and one from which we can learn. There is always room for innovation. Just because we have done something the same way over and over again, does not mean that we cannot make great leaps forward. However these leaps take time. There are many small steps that happen out of the spotlight. These leaps can take years of fine tuning. Like Fosbury, innovators will have to face critics; one must be willing to look foolish, weird, or like a failure. Yet with persistence, some pretty cool things can happen. Not a bad lesson from a random guy who won the high jump in the '68 Olympics.