tell me we'll never get used to it


(photo by ryan mcginley)



There have not been that many breakthroughs in the annals of personal locomotion. Running forward, for example, is still considered the quickest unassisted way to get from point A to point B. All the important means of fleeing and chasing were established early on. This rather obvious reality has frozen sports—most of which are just highly stylized versions of getting from here to there—in time. Some movements are simply beyond improvement.  Consider, then, the Fosbury Flop, an upside-down and backward leap over a high bar, an outright—an outrageous!—perversion of acceptable methods of jumping over obstacles. An absolute departure in form and technique. It was an insult to suggest, after all these eons, that there had been a better way to get over a barrier all along. And if there were, it ought to have come from a coach, a professor of kinesiology, a biomechanic, not an Oregon teenager of middling jumping ability.  —Richard Hoffer, from The Revolutionary

There have not been that many breakthroughs in the annals of personal locomotion. Running forward, for example, is still considered the quickest unassisted way to get from point A to point B. All the important means of fleeing and chasing were established early on. This rather obvious reality has frozen sports—most of which are just highly stylized versions of getting from here to there—in time. Some movements are simply beyond improvement. 

Consider, then, the Fosbury Flop, an upside-down and backward leap over a high bar, an outright—an outrageous!—perversion of acceptable methods of jumping over obstacles. An absolute departure in form and technique. It was an insult to suggest, after all these eons, that there had been a better way to get over a barrier all along. And if there were, it ought to have come from a coach, a professor of kinesiology, a biomechanic, not an Oregon teenager of middling jumping ability. 

—Richard Hoffer, from The Revolutionary

  1. tl81 reblogged this from petitchou
  2. petitchou posted this
Search
Navigate
Archive

Text, photographs, quotes, links, conversations, audio and visual material preserved for future reference.

Twitter