A few years ago I was having fun of thinking about the fluid dynamics of a ball moving through the air. The main focus was beach volleyball, but also several other sports that use roughly spherical balls. Of these, the two with the most curious motions are table tennis and beach volleyball. It came as a surprise as soccer (football in most of the world) has dramatic movements and baseball can be tricky, but they're not in the league of these two other sports. People found it fun so I decided expand it into a college level class - a one semester physics of sport course for non-majors.
It was a very interactive affair,. After a few weeks a few coaches and their assistants turned up, offering things to think about. After going through the Fosbury flop, one of the track and field coaches mentioned there had been a similar innovation in long jump, but it had been outlawed as too dangerous. He pointed out you lose a lot of energy at takeoff by leaning back at takeoff. The innovation was to halt the loss doing a forward somersault. He couldn't remember the name of the athlete who did it, but thought it was in the mid 70s with World Athletics quickly banning it.
That evening I took pencil to paper and came to the conclusion it could increase distance traveled by as much as ten percent. Ten percent is a change in sport where people will try crazy things for fractions of a percent. Eventually around I found the athlete - a student from New Zealand who would have had the world record on his first attempt if he had slightly better form. There were a few still images, but no video.
With the recent passing and celebration of the life of Dick Fosbury I decided to look again. Two years ago an interview with a video of the jump was posted. Long jump records would probably be over ten meters if it hadn't been banned. The physics is simple - the leap was realizing you didn't have to lean back.
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