Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Banned Techniques That Would Smash World Records in Track and Field

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

In 1968, American high jumper Dick Fosbury introduced a new way to compete in the high jump. His new technique worked so well that he won an Olympic gold medal, and within a few years, everyone used his method of high jumping. Fosbury’s innovation isn’t the only one in the track and field world. There have been several other technique innovations in other events, which have been shown dramatically improve performance. Learn about the track and field techniques which would smash world records (if they weren’t illegal) on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast. Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1968, American high jumper Dick Fosberry introduced a new way to compete in the high jump. His technique worked so well that he won an Olympic gold medal, and within a few years, everyone used his method of high jumping. Fosbury's innovation wasn't the only one in the world of track and field. There have been several other innovations in other events, which have been shown to dramatically improve performance. Learn about the track and field techniques which would smash world records, if they weren't illegal, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day and tonight. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Innovations and athletics are few and far between. There are only so many ways to run, jump, and throw something. That being said, innovations do arise, and sometimes those innovations are so good that they're

banned by the authorities that govern various sports. A good example is the dolphin kick in swimming. The dolphin kick is when you kick with both feet together and undulate your entire body to move forward. In the 1980s, some swimmers began experimenting with the dolphin kick and found it to be extremely effective. They discovered that they could actually swim faster underwater using the dolphin kick, then they could at the surface in events like the backstroke. It was only a matter of time before swimmers took this to its logical conclusion. They would dive into the pool and swim the entire length of the pool underwater using the dolphin kick, maybe only doing one or two strokes on the surface.

Then they would turn around and do the same thing again. Eventually, the governing body and swimming realized that having competitors underwater the entire time, and not doing the stroke they were competing in, sort of defeated the purpose of the event. So they set a rule where you could only swim under water for the first 15 meters. So if you want to know what the absolute fastest a human can swim is, you probably aren't going to determine that from competitive swimming. Track and field have had many such innovations in technique. I've previously done an entire episode on Dick Fosberry and the Fosberry flop. This was an innovation that stuck and was allowed under the rules. If you've ever seen

anyone compete in the high jump, they were probably doing the Fosbury Flop, which is when you go over the bar head first on your back. Before that, most jumpers went over the bar in a type of scissor kick. If you watch a video of someone doing a scissor kick, which is still done at the lower levels of competition, you can see why the Fosbury Flop works so well. A scissor kick requires you to have your center of mass well above the bar, whereas the Fosbury Flop actually has your center of mass below the bar. There is a current debate as to if there isn't an even better way to jump higher. Basically, you do what gymnasts do. You get a running start and do a massive backflip. Heights measured by gymnasts doing floor exercises would have them near the world record in the high jump.

But it's not known if such a technique would be allowed given the current rules. Another event that had something you could call an innovation was pole vaulting. In pole vaulting, as in high jumping, there's a bar that you have to clear without knocking the bar off its stand. The bar isn't held in place by anything. It just rests on two pegs. You're allowed to bump into the bar, but you can't knock it off. In the 1980s, U.S. Olympian David Volz developed a technique where when he was in mid-air, he would hold the bar with his hand to steady it so it wouldn't fall off. This was totally legal as there were no rules about touching the bar. Other athletes began to take this even further, sometimes putting the bar back in place or even bending it to help him get over. This became known as Volzing. The rules in pole vaulting were eventually changed such that you can't hold or steady the bar with your hands while going over.

Again, this seems like a pretty reasonable rule, even if studying a bar with your hands while in mid-air is a pretty impressive feat of coordination. Other innovations seem totally reasonable and really just seem clever. Take the shot putt. A typical shot putter will hold the shot near their chin, crouch down, and then explode up to launch the shot while turn. around. This is known as the glide technique. And there's also a spin technique whereby you spin around and try to build momentum. And everything has to be done within a circle that is seven feet or 2.135 meters in diameter. What some lower-level shot putters eventually figured out, and they were usually women, was that you could create much more momentum if you did a cartwheel within the

circle. Shot putters who were agile enough to pull it off could get as much as one to two extra meters per throw. This technique was banned in 2008, supposedly for reasons of safety. There is also a technique that has proven to be extremely successful in long jumping. It was developed by a New Zealand jumper by the name of Tauriki Delamere. When you're long jumping, you sprint to the board from which you have to launch yourself forward. All of your body's momentum is moving forward, and when you jump, your body wants to rotate forward. However, if you've ever seen anyone doing a long jump, you have to counter that forward rotation in your body to stick your legs out in front of you.

In 1974, Delamere was attending Washington State University and was wondering why he had to waste his energy countering his forward rotation. Instead of countering that forward rotation, why not just work with it? So, at the Pack 8 Conference Championship at the L.A. Coliseum, he put this theory into action by doing a forward somersault in mid-air during his jump. Delamere wasn't the first person to think of this technique. There were other athletes who tried it in practice, and there were rumors about the Soviets breaking this out at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.

Using this technique, the first time he ever successfully tried it, Delamere's feet landed at 8.4 meters. This would have been the world record prior to Bob Beeman's incredible jump at the 1968 Olympics. The problem was that Delamere had never done this in practice. If you do a summer assault in mid-air, you need to have some spatial awareness like a gymnast so you land properly. His landing was a bit unstable, which caused him to put his arm back to catch himself, which ended up giving him a jump of 7.7 meters. Had he stuck the landing, it would have been a low-altitude world record.

But even without sticking the landing, it was still the best jump of the day at the meet and tied the jump of the reigning Olympic champion Randy Williams. This came from someone who was not quite a world-class long jumper and had never done this type of jump before. So the question was, what could a real world-class long jumper do with this technique if they had the time to practice it? We never got the answer to that question

because the somersault was banned in 1975 by the world-governing body for track and field. The reason they gave is that it was too dangerous. The problem is that if a simple somersault is too dangerous, then why is all of gymnastics allowed to exist? They do flips on wooden beams and floors which are much harder than a sandpit. Personally speaking, the long jump would be far more entertaining if competitors were allowed to do a somersault. The final event I want to bring up is one where a change in technique really did blow away all the records. And yet, the ban on the technique makes perfect sense.

The javelin. Most of you've probably at least seen. an image of someone throwing a javelin or a spear. The javelin is gripped about midway, held over the shoulder at about head level, and then tossed with a running start. Given that humans have been throwing spears for thousands of years, you'd think that this would be the best way to throw a javelin. The problem with that is that throwing a spear was usually done for accuracy, not distance. If you used a spear for hunting or in combat, you usually had a target that you wanted to hit. The javelin competition isn't about accuracy. It's about distance.

This traditional method of throwing a javelin is how everyone did it because that's how everybody did it. And just to put everything into context, the world's record in the javelin, which can never again be broken, is 104 meters. The reason this record can't be broken is because after the record was set, they changed the javelin so it wouldn't fly so far, because it was literally starting to go out of the field and into the track. The new javelin world record is still 98.48 meters. Back in the 1950s, when this story starts to take place, the world's record was around 84.5 meters. In 1956, a retired Spanish discus thrower by the name of Felix Araskin had an idea. At the time, he was 49 years old and wondered what would happen if he threw a javelin like a discus.

He held the javelin along the length of his arm so that half of it was behind his back, and then he would spin like a discus thrower before releasing. According to legend, the 49-year-old Araskin, retired and overweight, managed to throw a javelin 112 meters, smashing the world record. Other Spanish javelin throwers began experimenting with the technique and got similar results. Some of them even began to put soap in their hands to make the javelin slide out of their hands more easily. The 1956 javelin gold medalist Egil Danielson from Norway supposedly tried it in practice

once and hit a distance of 93.6 meters. Now, at this point you might be wondering, if someone spinning in circles at a rapid rate holding a pointed spear in their greased up hand is safe? And the answer is no, no, this was not safe at all. But it did work extremely well, and it was really cool. The technique was banned by the governing body in 1957. Several Spanish javelin throwers went on a tour in the United States in 1957 and put on demonstrations. One Spanish thrower, Miguel de la Quadra Sassado, threw a javelin 124 meters using this technique in Shreveport, Louisiana. Quadra Salsato eventually worked with a coach in Puerto Rico to develop a hybrid approach that

they thought would be within the rules that didn't use an initial spin. Supposedly, with his new technique, he could reach world record distances, but the technique was also deemed to be illegal. What all of these examples show is that the limits of human achievement in athletics might actually be well beyond what we think they are. I'd agree that swimming an entire race underwater or holding the bar down in the pole vault does seem to violate the spirit of the competition. And a twirling, soapy spear thrower is probably not in the best interest of safety. However, a shot putter doing cartwheels or a long jumper doing a somersault seems to be very much within the spirit of the event, even if it is unorthodox. I think some of these events should loosen up their rules to allow more experimentation and technique.

It would make it much more interesting for spectators and really push the boundaries for what humans can achieve. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Oatmeal on My Frog over on the Discord server. They write, This podcast has been a favorite of mine for a while now since around mid-2020. It gives me information in bite-sized pieces and makes me very happy to listen to it on the way to and from school every day.

My sister and I enjoy listening to it during our downtime, and it gives us information we thought we'd never need. My favorite episode topics so far have been ones on weather phenomenon like your tornadoes one. Thank you so much for being such a valid point in our lives. Well, thank you, oatmeal. I still think I have some major weather or at least natural disaster episodes in me, both talking about general phenomenon and some exceptional disasters throughout history. As for you and your sister listening to the show on the way to and from school, congratulations.

You're not just going to school, you're going to school plus. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it read in the show. And yes, there is a Discord server for the show if that's your thing. You can find a link to it in the show notes. Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports. and the agony of defeat. The human drama of athletic competition. Wide world of...