The Wizard of Foz: Dick Fosbury's One-Man High-Jump Revolution

In 1968, perhaps the finest US Olympic men's track-and-field team ever stirred the world in unprecedented ways, among them the victory stand black rights protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos in Mexico City. But in competition no single athlete mirrored the free-thinking 1960s better than Dick Fosbury, a failed prep high jumper who invented an offbeat style that ultimately won him a gold medal and revolutionized the event. No jumpers today use any other style than his.

Yet few know the str...