"The kid is going to break his neck".

This is what coaches said, five years before his consecration in Mexico City, perplexed if not refractory, when they saw this 16-year-old high school student strive to cross the bars, not according to the technique of the belly roll or the scissor, but at his his own way, dorsally.

Until then, this son of English immigrants, born in Portland on March 6, 1947, was a student from Medford, Oregon, clearly more gifted for science than for the sport he had been practicing for six years, after having abandoned baseball. and basketball.

To the point of describing himself, in his autobiography "Wizard of Foz" ("the Wizard of Foz") as "one of the worst high jumpers in the state".

His perseverance, he first draws it from the fun of these upside down jumps performed in his corner.

These are above all rare moments of escape for the teenager who lost his little brother two years earlier, hit by a truck, while they were riding their bikes.

A tragedy that led to the divorce of his parents a few months later.

"Poetic, alliterative, conflicting"

So Fosbury turns his back on the bar as one turns his back on grief and pain.

And too bad if the fall sometimes hurts on the sand, sawdust or wood shavings on the ground, at a time when rubber foam is not yet used to receive the bodies.

Photo of Dick Fosbury, who died on March 13, 2023 at the age of 76, in Mexico City on October 20, 1968 during the Olympic Games during which he won the gold medal in the high jump © - / AFP/Archives

Tired of capping at 1.62 m with traditional jumping techniques, the young man ended up trying his back roll in 1963, at the Grant's Pass meeting (Oregon) where he cleared 1.70 m, 1.76 m and 1. 82 m trusting his instincts.

"When the bar got to a height I had never been before, I knew I had to do something different. I started changing my body position: as the bar went up , I went from a seated position to another more lying on my back. I improved my record and finished fourth in the competition. It was the click", he explained in 2018.

First making sure his technique didn't break any rules, he perfected it and began to make a name for himself the day the Medford Mail-Tribune published a photo in 1964 captioned "Fosbury Flops Over Bar" ("Fosbury backwards over the bar").

The "Fosbury flop" was born.

"It's poetic. It's alliterative. It's conflictual", then summarizes, with a touch of self-mockery, the one that journalists describe as "the laziest high jumper in the world".

Olympic record

Four years later, after narrowly escaping the Vietnam War, discharged for malformation of the spine, he took part in the final of the high jump competition at the Mexico Games on October 20.

Virtually unknown and therefore anything but favorite, he nevertheless won the gold medal, an Olympic record as a bonus (2.24 m).

"Once I was in the air, I could feel the space between my body and the bar. I knew I had passed the highest bar of my life. The whole stadium went into eruption, it was a great moment. I will never forget it", testifies then the one who suddenly becomes a celebrity and comes, without really realizing it, to put his sport upside down.

In 1968, the "revolution" is everywhere, in the guitars of the Beatles, under the cobblestones of France and on the height of athletics.

The "Fosbury flop" is quickly emulated: at the 1972 Olympics, which crowned for the last time a straddle, the Soviet Juri Tarmak, 28 of the 40 participants made it their technique.

“I adapted an outdated style and modernized it to make it effective. I had no idea anyone else in the world could use it and never imagined it would revolutionize the discipline,” confided the one who failed to qualify for the Munich Games, after having had to put his sports career on hold for his studies in civil engineering.

© 2023 AFP