Foz turned the high jump world upside down — and was a good guy to boot
Few remember that Fosbury emulated the fist raised in protest by sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the high jump medal ceremony at Mexico City in 1968
Hyperbole runs rampant in sport. Athletes are somewhat commonly called “the greatest.” Pundits — even those besides Bill Walton — are moved to use adjectives such as “tremendous” and “sensational” and “brilliant” in describing athletic achievement.
Dick Fosbury’s accomplishments, however, were truly beyond compare.
Foz — it’s what I, and most of his friends, always called him — was an original, one of those on a very short list who transcended his sport.
Fosbury, who died Sunday of lymphoma at age 76 at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, forever changed track and field’s high jump event with a style that would come to be called the “Fosbury Flop.”
“Dick revolutionized the sport itself — more than anybody else in history,” said Tom Woods, who followed Fosbury at Oregon State as the nation’s top high jumper.
The Medford native endured ridicule from many skeptics for the backward jumping style that took him to an Olympic gold medal in 1968 and immortality in his sport.
“There was simply no Olympic athlete like him,” said Fosbury’s biographer, Eugene writer Bob Welch. “You could argue he was the most unlikely gold medalist in the history of the Olympics. Not only was he a pretty average athlete who found a way to get good, the mechanism he used to get good was one that he designed himself.
“To try a new style when you are a high school sophomore at a time in your life when there’s pressure to perform — especially when your coach is Fred Spiegelberg, a legend in that town — it’s incredible he stayed the course. Other coaches said it was illegal. Doctors said he was going to break his back, and competitors laughed at him. Yet he believed in the style.
“There’s not another story like Dick Fosbury. He’s literally one of a kind.”
And, as Fosbury told Welch, presumably with a chuckle, “I even got naming rights.”
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During Fosbury’s childhood days in Medford, the straddle, or “Western roll,” was the style of choice in the high jump in the world. Foz used the “scissors” method until he got into high school, then converted to the straddle as a sophomore. Dissatisfied with his progress — he jumped 5-4 in an early meet that season — Fosbury modified the scissors approach by taking off on his outside foot and going over the bar backward, dropping his shoulders over the bar while raising his hips and butt. The technique worked, and Dick cleared 5-10 — six inches higher than his personal record.
A cutline underneath a photo in the Medford Mail Tribune that season compared the style to a “fish flopping in a boat.” Thus, the “Fosbury Flop” was born. As a senior, Fosbury broke the school record and placed second in the state meet at 6-5 1/2.
Dick Fosbury was a 21-year-old junior at Oregon State when he won the Olympic high jump gold medal at 7-4 1/4 in 1968 in Mexico City
Still, there weren’t many believers. For his first year and a half at Oregon State, coach Berny Wagner insisted Fosbury practice the straddle, though he allowed him to use the flop during meets to score team points. Soon, though, Wagner relented, and Fosbury began to concentrate solely on the flop. By 1968, his junior year, he had won the Pac-8 title with a leap of 7 feet and then the NCAA crown at 7-2 1/4, the fourth-best jump in U.S. history.
Fosbury burst into global prominence that September when he soared 7-4 1/4 to win gold at Mexico City. It wasn’t just a fad; it was an innovation that worked. By 1976, all of the 16 finalists in the Olympic high jump used the flop. Today, it’s the style everyone uses.
After winning a second straight NCAA title as a senior in 1969, Foz moved into the next phase of his life. He soon launched into a successful career as an engineer and, late in life, as a legislator in Idaho. He was a progressive, an active thinker who did what it took to get things done. Foz loved his alma mater and was a member of a committee that sought to bring back men’s track and field, the once storied program ended in 1988 due to athletic department budget cuts. A fund-raising effort got the stadium built, and stands and infrastructure are nearing the construction stage in Corvallis. As yet, though, no men’s track program. Foz won’t live to see one of his greatest dreams.
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Fosbury was the poster guy and meal ticket for an Oregon State high jump contingent that, in a four-year period under Wagner in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, had seven athletes clear 7 feet or better. In one Oregon Indoor in Portland’s Memorial Coliseum, four Beavers bettered 7 feet.
“We were the high jump capital of the universe,” said John Radetich, who would go on to jump 7-6 as a pro, better than the world record but not recognized by the International Amateur Athletics Federations.
““Dick revolutionized the sport itself — more than anybody else in history,””
Radetich was a year behind Fosbury in school, arriving on campus in 1966.
“As much as I thought I knew him well, I learned so much more from reading (Welch’s) ‘The Wizard of Foz,’ ” said Radetich, who converted to the flop some time after Fosbury. “Dick was a unique individual. His intensity as a competitor was second to none, but it took him a lot of energy to jump. I don’t think he enjoyed jumping. The rest of us would jump every day of the week if we could. He had to save up his energy so he could have it on the day of competition.
“I went in as a skeptic about the flop. If I hadn’t come to Oregon State, I probably wouldn’t have changed my style. It was a perfect place for me to learn the event. He showed me what could be possible.”
During the winter, the high jumpers would play basketball in Gill Coliseum.
“A couple of the guys on the basketball team were upset because we could dunk better than they could,” Radetich said. “I don’t think Fosbury was a talented all-around athlete. He seemed to be a little awkward. I used to jump from the free throw line. He could dunk, but not that well.”
In the high jump pit, though, especially when a lot was on the line, Fosbury reigned supreme.
“Working with his totally advanced style that was the wave of the future, it was cool to see what he could accomplish,” said Radetich, who lives in Philomath and worked with Oregon State’s female high jumpers in recent years.
Radetich would pull Fosbury out of frigid Lake Tahoe and probably save his life during a swim prior to the 1968 Olympic Trials.
“I honestly don’t think I could have made it on my own,” Fosbury said in his biography. “It’s a day I’ll never forget, the day my journey to be an Olympian almost ended.”
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Three years after Fosbury left Oregon State, Tom Woods arrived on the scene from Estacada High, creating an immediate hit by winning the NCAA high jump title at 7-3 1/4 as a freshman in 1972. A four-year All-American at OSU, he won the national AAU championship at a PR 7-5 1/2 in 1975. Fosbury’s legacy and the success of the other Beaver high jumpers was Wagner’s greatest recruiting tool.
“There never was any decision to make,” said Woods, now retired and living in Bend. “I was influenced by their program. It was the best place in the country for high jumpers.”
Woods used Fosbury for incentive.
“We watched his training films a lot during our seasons and implemented a lot of things he did, and also made some changes,” Woods said. “It was a time of experimenting. A lot of people were still trying to figure out what was best. Honestly, Dick got it started, and everything else after that was a lot of improvement along the way.”
Woods knew Fosbury only in passing until Dick was keynote speaker when Woods was inducted into the OSU Sports Hall of Fame in 2002.
“We went out afterward for drinks and sat down for a few hours and talked,” Woods said. “I learned more about Dick’s life than than I’d ever known prior to that. He was a great man. I was proud to follow in his footsteps.”
Brian Glanville was a freshman distance runner during Fosbury’s senior year at OSU.
“He had just won the Olympics, but there were no airs whatsoever,” Glanville recalled. “He treated everyone just like a friend or a teammate. Foz was down to earth. I’m not sure he was real comfortable with all the notoriety he got.”
Steve Preece recalls Fosbury as a rebel, a free spirit and a salt-of-the-earth guy. Preece, the football quarterback, and Fosbury were in the same freshman class at OSU.
Friend and OSU classmate Steve Preece got a kick out of watching Fosbury on his long-run approach to every high jump
“He was Foz,” Preece said, “and I was Fox.”
Fosbury’s best friends, Preece said, were fullback Bill Enyart and defensive lineman Jerry Sullivan.
“Dick and ‘Buff’ (Enyart) were always on campus, protesting something,” Preece said. “I assure you, they were peaceful protests, but they had an opinion and wanted to tell everybody.”
Preece met Fosbury during the freshman track and field season. Preece was a sprinter.
“Foz was such a fun guy to be around,” he said. “We played basketball during the winters. There are some great stories about Foz.”
During the summer of 1968, the OSU football players ran the steps at Parker Stadium.
“If you were in really good shape, you could do them two steps at a time,” Preece said. “Four or five of us could do the two-step. It was a measure of what kind of shape we were in.”
Before he left for the Olympics, Fosbury would occasionally join the gridders.
“Foz did a one-legged jump the whole side of the stadium,” Preece said. “He’d do it all on his right foot. Then he got so he’d do it two steps at a time with one foot. He wasn’t doing it so much for a workout as to show off.
“It was so much fun when we’d go to his meets to watch him jump (at Bell Field). His run-up was so long, you couldn’t find him for a minute. Then the crowd would part, and Foz would start that screwy run-up, and he’d use that screwy technique to glide over the bar. Amazing.”
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As an adult, Fosbury was a doer. He served a four-year term as president of the World Olympians and Paralympians Association and traveled the globe in that capacity. He enjoyed a successful 33-year run with his engineering firm in Idaho. Since his retirement in 2011, Fosbury ran for a seat in the Idaho House of Representatives (he lost) and for Blaine County Commissioner (he won). He was still in the latter position when he died.
Post-retirement, Fosbury was involved in staging clinics throughout the U.S. with coaches and athletes to show them how to use the flop technique.
For more than 20 years in Pocatello, Idaho, Fosbury served as chairman of the Simplot Games, which became one of America’s premier indoor high school meets.
“My daughter competed in that meet,” said Jeff Oveson, who was the Pac-8 400 hurdles champion as a junior at OSU in 1973. “Dick played a major role in turning that into a monster event. Such a gentleman, and generous with his time.”
Fosbury also did some motivational speaking.
“He said he would be asked by corporate leaders to teach them how to break the mold,” said Doug Crooks, a former Beaver distance runner.
Fosbury wanted nothing more than to restore men’s track and field at his alma mater. For years, former OSU track and field athletes such as Glanville, Crooks, Dick Oldfield, Mark Fricker, John Ball, Darrell Horn and Lynn Eves, along with former coach Berny Wagner, formed a committee to raise funds to build a new track stadium and bring back the sport.
“Besides being an incredible ambassador for Oregon State, Foz became the touchstone for bringing the program back,” Crooks said. “When you were trying to get people to remember the program, most of the time, you’d lead with ‘Dick Fosbury.’ He was the face of our movement, but he wasn’t just a figurehead. He had ideas. His network was worldwide.
“Foz was so focused. I always admired that about him. He knew where you were coming from when you talked to him. He had so many relevant things to say.”
Doug Oxsen was the point person for the athletic department in the fund-raising efforts.
“There was so much built-up anger from our former (track and field) athletes that the program had been dropped,” said Oxsen, development director for athletics at OSU from 2002-18. “Kelly (Sullivan, then the women’s coach) and I had to help them get over it. Fosbury was never a problem. He looked at it as an opportunity.”
In 2018, on the 50th anniversary of his gold medal performance, Oregon State erected a bronze life-size statue of Fosbury leaping over a bar near the spot on campus where the high jump pit at Bell Field once stood. It remains the only statue of an athlete on a college campus in the state of Oregon.
A bronze statue of Fosbury was erected on the Oregon State campus in 2018 (Courtesy of Bobbi Manos)
“While we were planning the statue, we asked Dick if he would join us on a donor trip to a football game, as a celebrity on that trip,” Oxsen said. “He was very positive in saying yes. He was so wonderful with the donors. He took as much time as anybody could answering questions. He had that great laugh, and positive conversations with all the people. He was just fantastic.”
As Welch was writing the book, he learned how popular Fosbury was — and not just after he became famous.
“I called somebody in the Medford High class of 1965 and said, ‘Hey I’m doing this book,’ ” Welch said. “We arranged for me to drive Medford for an interview. By the time I got down there from Eugene in four hours, this person had 10 people in his living room, all who knew Dick and were eager to talk about him. At Oregon State, his (Theta Chi) fraternity buddies were the same way.”
After the book was completed in 2018, Fosbury and Welch embarked on a book tour in the Willamette Valley.
“What impressed me was how many friends he had, not because he was the gold medalist but because he was a good guy,” Welch said. “Dick didn’t take himself too seriously. When we were doing the book events, he was staying in ramshackle motels.
“During the book signing, he was always talking too long to people. I’d be thinking, ‘Come on Dick, we’ve got a line forming.’ He wasn’t just there to sign books and make a lot of money. He cared about people. I was so impressed how deep his friendships were all over the world. He was all about sports bringing people together. He was a courageous innovator, but also a people person who proved nice guys don’t have to finish last.
“If you gotta die and leave a legacy, you can do worse than being an all-around great person.”
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In 2008, Fosbury was diagnosed with stage-one lymphoma. Soon thereafter, he underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his lower vertebra, followed by a round of chemotherapy. For many years after that, he was in remission. He told me a year ago, “I feel pretty good, actually.”
Fosbury seemed to be doing well last September when he attended the Oregon State-Montana State game at Providence Park.
“He and (wife) Robin stopped by (athletic director) Scott Barnes’ booth before the game,” Preece said. “He was the same old Foz. Looked happy and well.”
And then the lymphoma came back. Later in the season, Fosbury attended another football game in Corvallis. He spent some time with Jess Lewis, the former OSU two-sport star who was a fellow Olympian (as a heavyweight wrestler) at Mexico City.
“The cancer had come back,” Lewis said. “I could tell. He was pretty pale. It wasn’t like Foz. He Iiked his sun tan, almost as much as he liked getting over the bar.”
“I’d heard a month ago that his cancer had come back,” Welch said. “I didn’t think he’d be gone this soon. He kept it to himself pretty well.”
“I was caught by surprise,” Preece said. “That was the way he was. Didn’t want anybody to worry about him or feel sorry for him.”
Now, so quickly, so sadly, Foz has left the pit for good.
It’s hard for many to grasp the fact that he’s gone.
“It’s a big loss,” Woods said. “Not just for his family and friends, but for the world.”
“I’m really sad my friend is gone,” Radetich said. “As high jumpers, we were always trying to escape the bounds of gravity, and we always failed. I hope he is enjoying the big high jump pit in the sky.”
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