We recently have been asked to do a lot more with a lot less and our Regional Director, Karen Massey introduced Dick Fosbury as an example of radically changing the way we do business.
As a district we have adopted a new team name, "The Pfizer Pfosberries" and our new way of doing business is a laser focus on determining highest potential prospects and applying resources where they will have the greatest impact!
Dick Fosbury using the "Fosbury Flop," a then-unorthodox head-first, back-to-the-bar method of high jumping, at the Mexico City Games. He cleared 7 feet 41/4 inches for a gold medal and a world record.
Fearless Fosbury Flops to Glory
October 20, 1968
NEW YORK-Fearless Fosbury is a 21-year-old senior at Oregon State University with a major in civil engineering, two bad feet, a worn-out body, an unbelievable style of high-jumping head first on his back, a habit of talking to himself in midair-and a gold medal and an Olympic record. He started jumping over bars in the fifth grade with the orthodox scissor-kick, and cleared 3 feet 10 inches. In high school, despite the dire warnings of every coach who watched him, he invented the "Fosbury Flop" and reached 6‚7. And today in Mexico City he amazed 80,000 persons by clearing 7 feet 41/4 inches for an Olympic record.Before he springs from the pad like some great rocket lifting off, Dick Fosbury meditates, worries, psyches himself. Once he pondered four and a half minutes before approaching the bar. On the way over, he goads himself with a pep talk. When he lands, it's usually on his shoulder blades but sometimes on his neck. "I have a bad back," Fosbury said after his victory, "and I lost a big patch of skin on the back of my left heel. Then I tripped on some stone steps the other day and strained a ligament in my right foot. I guess I use positive thinking. Every time I approach the bar I keep telling myself, 'I can do it, I can do it.' "
When he did it tonight, Fosbury gave the world a spectacular display of his "thing," which he describes as follows: "I take off on my right, or outside, foot rather than my left foot. Then I turn my back to the bar, arch my back over the bar and then kick my legs out to clear the bar." The people at Oregon State are studying hundreds of films of their flying civil engineer in action, but so far nobody has figured out a way to duplicate his style. It is totally unlike the scissorkick, the Western roll, the Eastern cutoff and other techniques. Even Fearless Fosbury is amazed. "Sometimes I see movies," he says, "and I really wonder how I do it."
However, Fosbury foresees the day when boys all over America will be soaring over bars upside-down. "I think quite a few kids will begin trying it my way now," he said. "I don't guarantee results, and I don't recommend my style to anyone. All I say is if a kid can't straddle, he can try it my way."
Dick Fosbury had discovered as a schoolboy that by lowering his center of gravity by stretching out on his back he could actually jump higher. Within a decade of his gold medal, the scissors kick had been rendered old-fashioned and the great majority of Olympic high jumpers were using Fosbury's technique.
