"Flopping" Toward Gold: How an Olympic Champion Transformed a Sport

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I suspect that some track and field fans of the 1960s made fun of Mr. Dick Fosbury. After all, many innovators get ridiculed, demeaned, and rejected.

Even the name of his revolutionary approach to high jumping, the “Fosbury Flop,” sounded like a gigantic mistake.

It wasn’t. In fact, Mr. Fosbury’s creative thinking was rather brilliant. Though he passed away last month, his innovative technique will long be remembered among high jump aficionados.

Consider this track event prior to Mr. Fosbury’s contribution: In running and attempting to leap over a raised bar held by two posts, it made sense to jump in a straightforward way so that a person’s legs clear the bar first. Similar to jumping over a hurdle, the idea was to jump high enough to raise one’s legs—or some part of the body—over the bar.

Mr. Fosbury changed all that in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. He sprinted toward the bar, and, upon nearly reaching it, turned his body in a parallel way to it so that his back went over the bar first. His legs followed in a way that was the opposite of other Olympic champions to that point.

It was akin to parking a car. Most drivers head straight into the spot. Mr. Fosbury, however, preferred backing in.

Mr. Fosbury’s success in capturing the gold medal may have confounded some sports fans. Contestants in the high jump throughout the Olympics dating back to 1896 had done it in mostly the same conventional way. The U.S. Olympic team had been largely successful in the high jump, earning first place in 11 of the 15 Olympic games. Why change success?

According to Mr. Fosbury’s obituary in the New York Times, his “flopping struck many onlookers as residing somewhere between a physical feat and a joke” (Traub, 2023). If it were the latter, Mr. Fosbury had the last laugh: His Mexico City success before 80,000 spectators was an Olympic record.

Even by his own admission, Mr. Fosbury was not a natural athlete. He had said that he was initially the worst high jumper on his high school track and field team. He tried out for the school’s football and basketball teams, yet made neither one.

High school coaches discouraged him from the unconventional approach. They pulled out the rulebook to see if it was legal. They said he would hurt himself. Mr. Fosbury continued. Despite his Olympic success, he didn’t advise others to adopt his style. “I don't guarantee results, and I don't recommend my style to anyone. All I say is if a kid can't straddle, he can try it my way," he said in a 1968 interview (Durso).

Mr. Fosbury took high jumping out of the box. He did things his own way. He wore mismatched shoes. He wasn’t fond of practicing. He missed the opening ceremony of the Olympics, instead driving a van to see the pyramids.

He questioned tradition in a way that innovators do. In the words of Babineaux and Krumboltz (2013), “Innovators are actively inquisitive. They continually ask: Why are things this way? What is really going on here? What can be done differently?”

Some innovators repeatedly flop on their path to success. Not Mr. Fosbury… he is one of the few innovators who succeeded in repeated flopping.