What event did Dick Fosbury win at the 1968 Olympics?

What event did Dick Fosbury win at the 1968 Olympics? He won the men’s high jump at the Mexico City Games.

Fosbury cleared 2.24 meters, or 7 feet 4¼ inches, to win the gold medal and set Olympic and American records. He defeated fellow American Ed Caruthers, who took silver, while Valentin Gavrilov of the Soviet Union won bronze. Fosbury made his winning clearance on his third attempt.

His victory became a turning point because he used a radically unconventional technique. Instead of jumping face-first or sideways over the bar, he approached on a curve, took off at an angle, and passed over backward with his shoulders and back leading. The technique became known as the Fosbury Flop.

The flop was not entirely invented from nothing—other athletes had experimented with backward motion—but Fosbury perfected and popularized it. By the 1970s, it had become the dominant high-jump style. The 1968 contest was therefore both a gold-medal performance and a technical revolution.