Photo: Noam Galai/WireImage
Dick Fosbury, a high jumper who won gold in the 1968 Olympics and is highly recognized as a revolutionary athlete, has died. He was 76.
His agent, Ray Schulte,announced his death in an Instagram poston Monday. He explained that Fosbury “passed away peacefully in his sleep early Sunday morning after a short bout with a recurrence of lymphoma.”
Fosbury wasfirst diagnosed with lymphoma in 2008, reportsAthletics Weekly, and previously had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on his lower vertebrae.
“With his groundbreaking ‘Fosbury Flop’ technique, Dick Fosbury not only won Olympic gold at Mexico City 1968 but also revolutionized the high jump. He was truly an Olympic pioneer and legend,” shared Team USA in aTwitter post on Mondayrecognizing Fosbury’s achievements.
The technique was unseen at the time, as athletes in the sport hadnever performed a back-first high jump, according to Olympics.com.
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“Fosbury was the first athlete to jump ‘back first,’ shifting his center of gravity and revolutionizing a discipline that had been largely unchanged in 50 years as athletes maintained the forward-facing straddle technique,” they add.
In a 2017 interview for the NBC Sports film “1968”, he shared that he first used the technique during acompetition in April 1963when he was 16 years old, according to NBC Sports.
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“I converted the old ‘scissors’ style, where a jumper would hurdle over the bar, and their legs would do a scissor kick,” he said then. “I changed that style and modernized it to make it more efficient.”
According to the university, Fosbury’s achievements have alsogiven him honorsin the Oregon State Sports Hall of Fame, the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame, the World Humanitarian Hall of Fame, the National High School Hall of Fame, and the State of Oregon Sports Hall of Fame.
Ingrid Vasquez
source: people.com
