Dick Fosbury, who used a revolutionary high-jumping style to win the 1968 Olympic gold medal as an Oregon State junior, died Sunday. He was 76.
Ray Schulte, Fosbury’s former agent, said in a statement that the cause of death was lymphoma.
Fosbury began tinkering with what became known as the “Fosbury Flop” while he was a member of the Medford High School track team after failing to clear 5 feet, 6 inches.
At the time, Fosbury was using a conventional, straddle technique in which athletes faced the bar as they jumped. Fosbury, against the advice of his coaches, began successfully clearing the bar by going over backward.
“I had never cleared (5-6) before and I knew I had to do something different to get over that bar,” Fosbury told reporters. “So, to lift my hips, I leaned back to get my body out of the way. And it worked.”
Even after joining the OSU track team, Fosbury faced resistance from the coaching staff until he began clearing 7 feet, winning meets and setting records.
The “Fosbury Flop” still was considered a novelty when Fosbury won the 1968 NCAA championship, made the Olympic team and then brought home the gold medal from the games in Mexico City.
Four years later, 28 of 40 high jumpers in the Munich Olympics were using Fosbury’s flop. It’s now the default style for virtually all competitive high jumpers.
The late Kenny Moore was a University of Oregon distance runner and Fosbury’s teammate on the 1968 U.S. Olympic team.
In an interview with Eugene author Bob Welch for the biography “The Wizard of Foz,” Moore asked: “Has there ever been an athlete who epitomized American imagination better than Fosbury with his revolutionary flop?”
Fosbury was born in Portland on March 6, 1947, and grew up in Medford. His father drove a logging truck. His mom was a teacher.
Tragedy struck the family in 1961, when Fosbury’s younger brother, Greg, was hit by an automobile and killed while riding his bike. It was a formative experience for Dick, who channeled his grief into a competitive focus.
Former Oregon State coach Berny Wagner once said: “Steve Prefontaine was the greatest competitor on the track I ever saw. Dick Fosbury was the greatest I ever saw on the field. When it mattered, he just didn’t lose.”
Fosbury returned to OSU for his senior season to win the NCAA championship. Afterward, he largely gave up competitive high jumping to concentrate on a degree in civil engineering.
Other than a brief fling with the short-lived International Track Association in the 1970s, Fosbury’s attention was elsewhere.
Before leaving OSU, though, Fosbury found himself in the middle of a controversial campus incident. It began when football coach Dee Andros ordered linebacker Fred Milton to shave his beard to conform to team rules in 1969.
Milton, who was Black, refused. Andros dismissed him from the team.
Black athletes and the OSU chapter of the Black Student Union rallied around Milton. Others in the greater campus community supported Andros.
On Feb. 26, 1969, dueling rallies took place on campus. Fosbury was one of a handful of white athletes to appear at the Milton rally in support of the dismissed linebacker.
“After that I was either loved or hated,” Fosbury told Welch. “There wasn’t much in between.”
In 1977, Fosbury moved to Idaho, where he owned a civil engineering firm and worked as a city engineer for the cities of Ketchum and Sun Valley.
There, he oversaw a 36-mile system of bike and running trails in the area known as the Wood River and Sun Valley Trails.
He was involved politicially. In 2014, he lost a race for the Idaho Legislature as a Democrat. At his death, Fosbury was in his second term as a Blaine County commissioner.
Fosbury is past president of the World Olympians Association, founder of the Idaho Chapter of Olympians and had been active with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Association.
He is a member of the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame, the National High School Hall of Fame and the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame.
In 2018, fifty years after Fosbury’s winning performance in Mexico City, OSU honored him by unveiling an on-campus statue of Fosbury taking flight.
Fosbury is survived by his wife, Robin Tomasi, son, Erich Fosbury, and stepdaughters Stephanie Thomas-Phipps and Kristin Thompson.
He stayed active in the sport as a clinician, participating in the Dick Fosbury Track Camps and others. His connection with his event and the sport has remained constant for more than a half century, remaining famous enough to appear in commercials for a number of companies.
As Fosbury once quipped in a commercial for Burger King: “I ate my burger upside down.”
— Ken Goe, for The Oregonian/OregonLive
KenGoe1020@gmail.com | Twitter: @KenGoe
