Fosbury flop is the technique one sees all high jumpers use in competitions nowadays, but it wasn’t always so. Till American athlete Dick Fosbury hauled himself over the bar to a gold medal with this technique at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, high jumpers mostly had a frontal/sideways take-off, variations including the straddle jump, Western roll, Eastern cut-off and scissors jump. In the Fosbury flop, the jumper takes off sideways but rotates further mid-air to gain elevation and land on the back. The technique was, of course, aided substantially by the switch from sandpits or soft matting to deep-foam mats.
