Golden age of flop endures

Dick Fosbury at the Millennium Stadium in Auckland this week. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Anyone who stands at the entrance to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne can't help but look up.

A bar rests 2.45 metres above ground between two poles. It requires a full tilt of the head.

To grasp its significance, you have to look at a plaque nearby which tells you this is the height Cuban Javier Sotomayor cleared in July 1993 in Spain to set the world high jump record. Later in his career, Sotomayor was found guilty of doping. He needed more than nandrolone to clear that height; he needed the Fosbury Flop.

Dick Fosbury wants to be a normal guy but clearing seven foot, four and a quarter inches (2.24m) to win gold at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968 changed his life forever.

At 21, he engineered the technique most high jumpers use today of jumping off their hindmost leg, arching their back and lifting their legs to go clear.

Before that the western roll, straddle and scissors methods were preferred but the advent of foam mats to replace wood chips and sand meant Fosbury's technique took hold.

Four years later at Munich, 28 of the 40 competitors aped his initiative.

It wasn't just high jump that changed. Fosbury's life did too. Before the Olympics, he was just 'one of the boys' who enjoyed a beer, shooting pool and chasing girls in his home state of Oregon while listening to Jefferson Airplane, The Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead. Afterwards he was public property.

"It wasn't easy taking it in your stride. Coaches prepare you to win but they don't prepare you to be famous. I was still a student but got invited to show off my jump on the likes of The Johnny Carson Show in front of [comedian] Bill Cosby.

"I also went on shows like The Dating Game ... goofy stuff like that. My life was never the same. People would come up to greet me walking down the street. They put you on a pedestal but I didn't like being separated or elevated because it generated either hero worship or criticism.

"If I went out on the town, with my mates, some of the public thought that wasn't appropriate. It was hard to stay centred and easier to keep to myself, otherwise I was likely to get out of control and lose myself to temptation.

"That's why I like living in the relatively remote ski resort of Sun Valley, Idaho [population approximately 20,000].

"Movie stars like Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger visit and they love being treated normally up there, before going back to work in the buzz of Los Angeles."

Fosbury's rise to fame in 1968 coincided with a tumultuous period in civil rights history in the United States and abroad.

The US had seen political leaders Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinated, while thousands demonstrated (and many lost their lives) in Prague, Paris and even Mexico City just days before the Olympics.

Fosbury got a first-hand look at arguably the greatest silent protest by individuals at a Games when 200m gold medallist Tommie Smith and bronze medallist John Carlos delivered the Black Power salute, raising gloved fists above their heads on the victory dais.

They were protesting as part of the Olympic Project for Human Rights and wore black socks and no shoes to denote African-American poverty in the US.

"1968 was a time of change in culture and society. As a youth there was definitely an anti-establishment doctrine. As young idealists we felt the generation running things was taking us in the wrong direction. For example, so many of us were opposed to war.

"I was sympathetic to the search for racial equality and the justice message they [Smith and Carlos] were trying to deliver. Their demonstration changed everything in the athletes' village.

"Every morning in our tower, we'd come down to the cafeteria to eat and there would be up to 40 journalists trying to corner people for a comment. Tommie and John were gone the next day.

"I never saw them for a long time afterwards but we have maintained contact and they became wonderful human beings educating young people [Tommie has since retired]."

When he is not working as a civil engineer, Fosbury has also spent considerable time educating people on the values of the Olympic movement.

He is the president of the World Olympians Association, formed in 1995.

Fosbury spoke at the Golden Girls function in Auckland on Thursday night to celebrate New Zealand's six women Olympic gold medallists.

He says the key threat facing the Olympic movement is commercialisation.

"We need to maintain a balance. The Games need resources to fund them but we need to be wary because those sponsors who bring benefits also bring temptations.

"Look at the recent Fifa bidding scandal. It's shocking when you discover it but, looking back, it's a constant threat. In some cultures that is a way of doing business. It's hard to get unanimity when the IOC involves 200 plus countries."

Fosbury is married to his third wife and has one son, two step-daughters and five grandchildren. He has focused more on those things since a health scare with stage one lymphoma cancer in March 2008.

He had part of his lower vertebra cut out and replaced with a tube. The operation was successful and he went into remission in March last year.

He has had no problems since the chemotherapy and radiation treatment and has gone back to living a normal life. Sort of.