Dick Fosbury’s ‘Flop’ Olympic title, 50 years later

Saturday marks 50 years since Dick Fosbury extended the U.S. track and field team’s dominance at the Mexico City Games with his revolutionary “Fosbury Flop” to take high jump gold, clearing an Olympic record height. Fosbury reflected on his career and that gold medal in “The Wizard of Foz: Dick Fosbury’s One-Man High-Jump Revolution,” published last month. Here is an excerpt from that book on the Mexico City final …

WHEN DICK FOSBURY curled backward over the bar, “a yowl” erupted from the Mexico City crowd like nothing Seattle Times columnist Georg N. Meyers had heard in the stadium all week. Never mind that the bar was set at the ho-hum height of 2.03 meters (6’8″); the reaction for Fosbury…