Fosbury Flop

Fosbury flop is a high jump technique developed and first introduced by American high jumper Dick Fosbury , which allowed him to win the gold medal of the 1968 Summer Olympics and set a new Olympic record (2.24 m). Today, this technique is used by the vast majority of high jumpers.

Elena Slesarenko in the final stage of the jump

The technique of jumping is as follows: the athlete accelerates in a straight line or diagonally to the bar, takes the last few steps (three or five) in an arc, is strongly pushed away with the foot farthest from the bar, making a strong swing with the other and his hands, then flies forward over the bar, with your back to the ground, sliding along an imaginary spiral, while bending backward and trying to keep as much body mass as possible below the bar. In the final stage of the jump, when only legs remain above the bar, the athlete is already head down and lands on the mats with his back, shoulders and head.

The Fosbury-flop jump method ensures that the athlete takes the bar, and during the entire jump, its center of mass is below the bar at a distance of up to 20 cm.

When making a jump, a significant role is played by the swing movements performed by the foot (swing leg), hands, as well as the center of mass, concentrated in the pelvic part of the jumper, which transmit the energy accumulated during the run. In this sense, the “deflection” of the athlete plays an important role, since from the point of view of biomechanics this method is the most rational of the existing ones.

Soon after the games of the XIX Olympiad, hundreds of athletes began to "try on" the style of "fosbury-flop" on themselves. In practice, they appreciated the advantages of a quick take-off and flying backward over the bar. In 1973, jumping in this style, the American athlete Dwight Stones set a new world record, the first to conquer the coveted “round” line of 2 m 30 cm.

True, the "loose-leaf" style did not give up immediately. In 1977, Vladimir Yashchenko , jumping in this style, set a record of 2 m 33 cm, and then added another centimeter to it. But in 1980, Pole Jacek Wszola conquered 2 m 35 cm with the flop style, and since then this method has become generally accepted. In 1993, the “flop” helped Cuban Javier Sotomayor raise the bar of the world record to 2 m 45 cm.