This Dick Fosbury 1968 Olympics Team USA Autograph 8x10 Commemorative Photograph is the exact item you will receive.

Richard Douglas Fosbury (March 6, 1947 – March 12, 2023) was an American high jumper, who is considered one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field. He won a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics, revolutionizing the high jump event with a "back-first" technique now known as the Fosbury flop. 

His method was to sprint diagonally towards the bar, then curve and leap backward over the bar, which gave him a much lower center of mass in flight than traditional techniques. Debbie Brill was developing her similar "Brill Bend" around the same time. 

This approach has seen nearly universal adoption since Fosbury's performance in Mexico. Though he never returned to the Olympics, Fosbury continued to be involved in athletics after retirement and served on the executive board of the World Olympians Association.

Born in Portland, Oregon, Fosbury started experimenting with a new high-jumping technique at age 16, while attending Medford High School.

Fosbury had difficulty competing using the dominant high-jumping techniques of the period. In his second year, he failed to complete jumps of five feet (1.52 m), the qualifying height for many high-school track meets.

This dominant technique, the straddle method, was a complex motion where an athlete went over the high-jump bar facing down, and lifted their legs individually over the bar. Fosbury found it difficult to coordinate all the motions involved in the straddle method, so he began to experiment with other ways of doing the high jump.

Fosbury later recalled, "I knew I had to change my body position and that's what started first the revolution, and over the next two years, the evolution.Fosbury continued to refine his technique, developing a curved, J-shaped approach run. This allowed him to increase his speed, while the final "curved" steps served to rotate his hips. 

As his speed increased, so did his elevation. Fosbury made little to no use of his arms at takeoff, failing to "pump" them upwards, keeping them down, close to his body: the next generation of floppers would add an arm pump. Fosbury's key discovery was the need to adjust his point of takeoff as the bar was raised. 

His flight through the air described a parabola: as the bar went up in height, he needed more "flight time" so that the top of his arc was achieved as his hips passed over the bar. To increase "flight time," Fosbury moved his takeoff farther and farther away from the bar (and the pit). 

In the 1968 outdoor season, Fosbury won the Pac-8 Conference title and went on to win the NCAA championship at Berkeley, California, in mid-June with a jump of 7 feet 2.5 inches (2.197 m). He duplicated those wins the following year.

Fosbury at the 1968 U.S. Olympic trials

Fresh off his NCAA win in mid-June, Fosbury went on to win the U.S. Olympic trials two weeks later in Los Angeles with a jump of 2.16 m (7 ft 1 in). 

Despite the win, his place on the Olympic team was not assured because the U.S. Olympic Committee was worried that the results at sea-level Los Angeles might not be replicated at the high altitude in Mexico City. Another competition was held in September at the Olympic camp at Echo Summit near South Lake Tahoe, California. 

At that competition, Fosbury was one of four men to clear 2.18 m (7 ft 1+7⁄8 in), but he was in fourth place because of misses. The bar was raised to 2.20 m (7 ft 2+5⁄8 in), a height none of the four had ever cleared. 

However, Olympic veteran Ed Caruthers, high schooler Reynaldo Brown, and Fosbury all cleared on their first attempts. When the fourth man, John Hartfield, another high schooler who had been leading the competition, missed all three of his attempts, the Olympic team of three jumpers was set.

At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Fosbury took the gold medal and set a new Olympic record at 2.24 m (7 ft 4+1⁄4 in), displaying the potential of the new technique. Despite the initial skeptical reactions from the high-jumping community, the "Fosbury Flop" quickly gained acceptance. 

In the Finals competition, only three jumpers cleared 2.20 m (7 ft 2+5⁄8 in), and Fosbury was in the lead by virtue of having cleared every height on his first attempt. At the next height, 2.22 m (7 ft 3+3⁄8 in), Fosbury again cleared the bar on his first jump. 

His teammate, Ed Caruthers, cleared on his second effort, while Valentin Gavrilov of the Soviet Union missed on all three attempts and earned the bronze medal (third place).

The bar was raised to 2.24 m (7 ft 4+1⁄4 in), which would be new Olympic and United States records. Fosbury missed on his first two attempts, but cleared on his third, while Caruthers missed on all three of his attempts.

Having won the gold medal and broken the American record, Fosbury asked the bar to be raised to 2.29 m (7 ft 6+1⁄8 in) for his final three attempts, hoping to break Valeriy Brumel's five-year-old world record of 2.28 m (7 ft 5+3⁄4 in). He took three attempts at 2.29 m (7 ft 6+1⁄8 in) in an attempt to break the world record, but did not prevail.

At the next Olympics in 1972 at Munich, 28 of the 40 competitors used Fosbury's technique, although gold medalist Jüri Tarmak used the straddle technique. In the woman's event, the winner Ulrike Meyfarth used Fosbury's technique. By 1980, 13 of the 16 Olympic finalists used it.

Of the 36 Olympic medalists in the event from 1972 through 2000, 34 used "the Flop", making it the most popular technique in high jumping. Fosbury ran for Blaine County Commissioner against incumbent Larry Schoen in 2018, won the seat, and took office in 2019.