YouTube Gold: A Wild Long Jump Technique

Well this is something, unless you’re a student of track and field history, you probably never heard of.

In the 1970’s, a long jumper from New Zealand named Tuarirki Delamare started doing something astonishing and brilliant: he incorporated a somersault into his jump.

It makes a lot of sense because the momentum would tend to pull you forwards.

It reminds us of the revolution in high jumping ushered in by Dick Fosbury in the 1968 Olympics: prior to the now universal Fosbury Flop, where you go over back first, people went over face first. Obviously Fosbury had a better idea. His idea stuck of course, but the somersault?

The somersault was quickly banned and remains so.

As the narrator points out, it’s a much riskier technique than the standard method, but still, it’s pretty amazing to watch and it’s also easy to empathize with a genius who came up with a great idea - only to see it forever outlawed.