“Making a flop a success”
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Olympic gold medalist, Dick Fosbury, whom I blogged about (see below)
back in October of 2018, died on March 12, 2023 in Idaho, a state next door to Oregon, his home state.
His flop changed high jump techniques forever and is now used by almost every competitive high jumper. Even the questionable world record leap by Javier Sotomayor in 1993 of an astonishing 8 ft and 4 inches (2.45 meters) used the flop.
Mr. Fosbury was an engineering graduate of Oregon State University in Corvallis which makes him a “Beaver” and not a “Duck”.
This is noteworthy, at least in America's Pacific North West, since Eugene OR is the home of world-famous track teams, runners and events at the University of Oregon, aka the “Ducks”.
The rivalry between the Ducks and Beavers is legion, as they say.
Obviously, Mr. Fosbury's choosing OSU over OU shows he marched to the “beat of a different drummer” - a contrarian after my own heart - and led his life his own way.
And, his contrarian-mindedness (aka "lateral thinking") should be of comfort to those of us in the workplace – far from the sports arena - who sometimes find ourselves confounded with “group think” and antiquated tradition.
One writer suggests, when stymied, ask yourself: “What would Fosbury do?” Think laterally!
From October 2018:
Caption: Contrarian Jumping Horse by Peter Baldus
Less than a week ago, NPR marked the 50th anniversary of Dick Fosbury’s win in the high jump at the Mexico City Olympics.
What was remarkable then was this young man from Oregon using a move now immortalized as the Fosbury Flop.
As the NPR headline cleverly has it: He “turned his back on the bar and made a flop a success”.
Well, actually unlike the German cartoon with the horse launching backwards, Fosbury still faced the jump, approached it face on and then torqued his body so that he flew over with his back to the bar.
I’d say clearing 7 feet 4 inches and a quarter is a bit like flying.
Fosbury’s story offers all of us a lesson in contrarian thinking.
Few if any coaches believed his technique could work, yet he persisted because he believed going backwards, and lifting his hips, would help him clear the bar.
Now, for almost all subsequent high jumpers, the “only way forward was to go backwards.”
© Copyright text John Lubans 2018 and 2023
John Lubans - portrait by WSJ