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The following letter is part of our “Notes on Giants” collection, in which we explore the thoughts and lives of humanity’s greatest minds.
🏷️ Categories: Creativity, Life lessons.
At the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, in front of about 80,000 people, a nearly unknown young American prepared for his first attempt in the high jump event. He wasn’t the favorite— in fact, he was a pretty average athlete.
His name was Dick Fosbury.
He was 21, studied civil engineering, and was not considered promising. As a teenager, he hadn’t made his high school basketball team despite being almost six foot three... He had tried several sports and had always been average. He ended up in the high jump simply because it was where he failed the least… Nothing in his trajectory suggested that he would soon star in one of the most influential innovations in 20th-century sports (Britannica, 2026).
And yet, out of nowhere, that day the entire stadium would be watching him.
He won the gold medal.
He broke the record by clearing 2.24 meters.
And he did it with a technique that looked absurd.
He jumped backwards.
Question the basis
Today, Fosbury’s image seems completely normal—so normal that it’s hard to imagine it once appeared ridiculous. But before Fosbury, high jumpers used all sorts of techniques: the scissors, the roll, the straddle.
For decades, that had been the accepted professional way of doing it.
Dick Fosbury didn’t ignore tradition—he just kept losing that way.
So he searched for the optimal form within the same old rules.
He began experimenting until he found the key: a curved run-up, a takeoff with the “wrong foot,” a twist of the body, an arched back, a fall onto his shoulders. Nothing sensible or elegant by traditional standards, but it worked.
Coaches questioned him.
The press mocked him, calling him “the lazy jumper” (Martel, 2023).
This says a lot about how we tend to react to the new…
If we don’t understand it, we ridicule it. What’s hard to accept is that this exposes the fragility of our certainties. If an ordinary kid could outperform the best using a technique that looked like nonsense, maybe the problem wasn’t his oddness—maybe the problem was that the “best” had taken faulty fundamentals for granted simply because they never stopped to think and test things for themselves.
Many other geniuses went through the same.
The brilliant physicist Richard Feynman became interested in a physics topic and trusted the “experts’” reports without checking the original data. Only when he went back to the numbers himself did he realize everything was wrong.
Feynman revolutionized the field simply by doing the calculations on his own.
Just like Fosbury by questioning the fundamentals.
That is the essence of creativity: stopping to look at what everyone else has taken for granted and finding a new combination of elements that had never been put together before. At first, you’ll be criticized for stepping outside the mold—this is inevitable.
It is the paradox of creativity.
Everyone claims to value innovation, but no one wants to take the risk of trying.
We prefer the familiar even when it’s worse. What we know gives us a sense of control; what’s new generates too many doubts. That’s why everyone will doubt you. They don’t evaluate whether it works; they evaluate whether the idea fits their mental picture of how things are supposed to be.
Remember Fosbury’s case when you’re trying to solve your own problems.
Maybe the problem isn’t your lack of ability.
Maybe the problem is that you’re trying to jump the way everyone else jumps.
Dare to think differently, question the fundamentals, and mix all sorts of elements. Try absurd things, because once in a while, absurd things work.
And when they work, they change the world.
Dick Fosbury jumping at the 1968 Olympic Games (URL)
Want to learn more? Here are 3 related ideas to go deeper:
✍️ Your turn: What idea of yours seems absurd now but might work if you dared to try it?
💭 Quote of the day: “Once I was in the air, I could feel the space between my body and the bar. I knew I had cleared the highest jump of my life. The whole stadium exploded—it was a great moment. I will never forget it.” — Dick Fosbury (ANSA, 2023).
See you next time! 👋
Great story!