In the 1960s a young Oregon high jumper, Dick Fosbury, began going over the bar backward. A reporter for the Medford Mail-Tribune wrote that he looked like a fish flopping in a boat. A Los Angeles doctor sent him a letter: “For the good of young Americans, you should stop this ridiculous attack on the bar.”
Fosbury kept the method. In a 2014 interview he explained why: “My results were getting better.” At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City he cleared 2.24 meters, or 7 feet 4ΒΌ inches. He won the gold medal and set an Olympic record. By the next Olympics, 28 of the 40 high jumpers used his technique.