against history. They also help us to the notion of the spirit of sport.
Figure 2.2. Men’s and Women’s High Jump World Record Progression
The high jump was not an event in the ancient Greek Olympic Games.19 It emerged out of Germany in the late eighteenth century and, like many demonstrations of physical prowess, evolved into a competitive sport in England in the following century. Athletes first cleared the bar by jumping over it and lifting their legs. Humans are nothing if not innovative, and new techniques quickly followed. The Scissors, Eastern Cutoff, Western Roll, and Straddle were names of new techniques that offered alternative ways for the athlete to get his or her center of mass above the bar while also allowing those pesky legs to also get over the bar cleanly. The 1936 Olympics saw each of these techniques in use, but by the 1950s, athletes had mostly adopted the Straddle, which required them to roll over the bar belly-down and one leg at a time. Each innovation in technique saw greater advantages in performance, and world records were repeatedly set and broken in the first half of the twentieth century.
But it was not just technique that evolved. In 1957, Soviet Yuri Stepanov set a new world record at 2.16 meters. He cleverly used a shoe—what we might call an “elevator shoe”—with a very thick bottom, adding perhaps as much as an inch (~25 millimeters) to his height. This low-tech innovation gave him a slight edge in his leap. Because the International Amateur Athletic Federation had no rules in place for shoe sole thickness, Stepanov’s jump was legal. But it was also viewed as problematic. So, soon thereafter, shoe sole thickness was regulated at a maximum of 13 millimeters, but Stepanov’s thick-soled record was allowed to stand. The thick-soled shoe is an early example of how “technological augmentation” changes competition and forces us to consider and sometimes implement new rules, a subject explored in chapter 7.
The Soviets were not done innovating, however. National coach Vladimir Dyachov studied film to determine what characteristics in form led to the highest jumps. He developed a new approach called the Dive Straddle, in which the jumper cleared the bar one body segment at a time, rather than having the torso in parallel with the bar. Athletes who had mastered earlier styles sometimes faced difficulties in learning new techniques, creating ample opportunity for successful innovators to set new records.
The high jump was originally conducted entirely on a flat surface at ground level. Athletes jumped from and landed on what was typically a dirt track. This put a premium on landing on one’s feet or at least in a way that would not cause injury. Sawdust or dirt piles were later introduced to facilitate landing, which furthered the ability of athletes to innovate. But it was the introduction of foam landing pads around 1960 that led to even greater innovation, because they enabled athletes to land safely upon completing their jump. Innovations that enable athletes to perform better are surely part of the spirit of sport.
In 1968, a twenty-one-year-old athlete from Oregon, Dick Fosbury, followed up his victories in the NCAA indoor and outdoor championships with a gold medal at the 1968 Olympic Games. What made Fosbury’s victory so improbable was that he utilized a radically different technique than that being employed by the sport’s elite. That radical technique bears his name, the Fosbury Flop. More than forty years later, Fosbury recalled that people laughed when he first exhibited the technique, which involves jumping backwards over the bar, leading with one’s head, and landing on one’s back—hence the name. Fosbury wasn’t concerned that his jumping style was called a flop: “I wasn’t offended, any athlete responds to and craves attention. . . . You feed off that attention.”20 The adulation and attention, even fame, that come with doing something no one ever has done before are perhaps also part the spirit of sport.
The Flop was born in no small part because Fosbury’s high school had installed a modern landing pit, replacing the pile of wood chips that had cushioned the falls of previous, presumably bruised, Medford High School jumpers. Fosbury wasn’t the first or only person to flop. A Montana high school jumper named Bruce Quande also used the technique. Quande, however, did not go on to athletic success. Another, more successful, independent invention of what we call the Fosbury Flop came out of Canada, where Debbie Brill was working on what was locally known as the Brill Bend. She went on to set an indoor world record (1.99 meters in 1979), but missed her shot at an Olympic gold medal because of the Canadian boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Debbie Brill competing in Germany in 1972.
Today, the Fosbury Flop is well into middle age. Its use has become almost universal in elite high jumping. The men’s record has stood for more than twenty years and the women’s for almost thirty. Has innovation in the high jump reached a plateau? Is there no more edge to eke out of this sport?
I asked these questions of Jesus Dapena, a professor emeritus of kinesiology at the University of Indiana’s School of Public Health, who is a long-time student of and one of the world’s experts on the high jump. He told me that “Every person who has ever given a limit has had to wipe the egg off his face soon after when someone invariably broke the limits he had proposed!” Still, he ventured some guesses: “Of course, there are limits. Is it possible to jump 2.50 meters [8.2 feet]? I’d say, probably yes. 2.60 meters [8.5 feet]? I don’t know. 3.00 [meters, or 9.8 feet]? I’d say no—and if it ever happens, I’ll be long dead by then, so I’ll be safe from the egg-on-face situation!”21
One factor that may be responsible for the slowdown in high jump record breaking may be the ubiquity of the Fosbury Flop itself. Based on his research, Dapena concludes that “ultimately, the Fosbury-flop is the best technique for some jumpers, and the straddle for others.” Thus, we might expect to see both techniques employed, depending on what works best for a particular athlete. But, Dapena explains, today “only the Fosbury-flop is in use; the straddle has disappeared,” due, he argues, to the fact that the Fosbury Flop is easier to learn.
If Dapena is right, that the Straddle would be better for some athletes, then there are likely elite high jumpers today utilizing the Fosbury Flop who might jump a bit higher using the Straddle. Similarly, there may be jumpers who may have never reached elite levels because they were not suited for the Fosbury Flop. Either way, the net result is to reduce the potential for higher jumps by using a less-than-optimal technique for some jumpers and, perhaps, to reduce the pool of athletes competing in the high jump. Ironically, while the Fosbury Flop once helped athletes break performance boundaries, its ubiquity today could be holding them back.
But the moral of the story of Dick Fosbury—and Yuri Stepanov and Debbie Brill and all the others who have tried to jump higher than anyone else ever has—is not about imposing limits, but about extending them, pushing to the edge and then beyond. This drive to constantly push back the limits of performance, to do what no one else has done, is surely part of the spirit of sport. So, too, is the readiness to innovate in techniques and equipment (shoes, landing areas, etc.) in order to excel in athletic prowess through competition.
So, is trying to do one’s best the spirit of sport? Is it as simple as that? As simple as jumping over a bar? Regrettably, no. The issues can get complicated—very complicated, very fast.
Losing Sight of the Spirit of Sport: Scorching the Track with a Wicked Problem
“Wicked problems” are ones that, in the words of the classic 1973 article that explained the concept, “are ill-defined; and they rely upon elusive political judgment for resolution.”22 Such problems are “resolved,” not solved. They are called “wicked” because “they are “malignant” (in contrast to “benign”), or “vicious” (like a circle), or “tricky” (like a leprechaun), or “aggressive” (like a lion, in contrast to the docility of a lamb). By definition, we can never really solve a wicked problem; we can only do better or worse at trying to manage it. And better or worse depends on what we think the problem is in the first place, or whether we think that there even is a problem requiring