The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat for landing. Since ancient times, competitors have successively improved their technique until developing the universally preferred Fosbury Flop, in which athletes run towards the bar and leap head first with their back to the bar.
Helmut Zacharias was a German violinist and composer who created over 400 works and sold 14 million records. He also appeared in a number of films, usually playing musicians.
Rosemarie "Rosi" Ackermann is a German former high jumper, Olympic champion and multiple world record holder. In Berlin on 26 August 1977, she became the first female high jumper to clear a height of two metres.
Miguel Pate is an American track and field athlete. His speciality is the long jump, although during his high school and collegiate career he also competed in the triple jump, high jump, 100 m, 200 m, 4 × 100 m relay, and 4 × 400 m.
Kajsa Margareta Bergqvist is a Swedish former high jumper. She won one bronze medal in the Olympic Games, one gold and two bronze medals in the World Championships in Athletics and one gold and one bronze in the European Championships. Her personal outdoor record of 2.06 m, set in Germany in 2003, is also a Swedish record. Her indoor record of 2.08 m, set at the Hochsprung mit Musik meeting in 2006, is the world indoor record.
Chaunté Lowe is an American athlete who competes in the high jump. A four-time Olympian, she is the 2008 Olympic bronze medalist, the 2005 World Championship silver medalist and the 2012 World Indoor gold medalist. She initially finished sixth in the 2008 Olympic high jump final, but was promoted to the bronze medal in 2016 after three competitors were disqualified for doping. She is the American record holder in the women's high jump with an outdoor clearance of 2.05 m in 2010, and holds the indoor record with a clearance of 2.02 m in 2012.
John Curtis Thomas was an American track and field athlete who set several world records in the high jump using the straddle technique. As a youth, he earned the Eagle Scout award. At the age of 17, while a freshman at Boston University, Thomas became the first man to clear 7 feet indoors. He subsequently pushed the world indoor record to 7'1½", and broke the world outdoor record three times, with a career best jump of 7'3¾" in 1960, at the age of 19.
The straddle technique was the dominant style in the high jump before the development of the Fosbury Flop. It is a successor of the Western roll, for which it is sometimes confused.
Dwight Edwin Stones is an American television commentator and a two-time Olympic bronze medalist and former three-time world record holder in the men's high jump. During his 16-year career, he won 19 national championships. In 1984, Stones became the first athlete to both compete and serve as an announcer at the same Olympics. Since then, he has been a color analyst for all three major networks in the United States and continues to cover track and field on television. He served as an analyst for NBC Sports coverage of Track and Field at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He is a member of the US Track Hall of Fame, the California Sports Hall of Fame, the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, and the Orange County Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Nelson ÉvoraGCIH is an Ivory Coast-born Portuguese track and field athlete of Cape Verdean descent who specializes in the triple jump.
Carlo Thränhardt is a retired German high jumper. He excelled at indoor competitions, setting the world indoor record on three occasions between 1984 and 1988. His best mark of 2.42 metres ranks him second on the indoor all-time list one-centimetre behind world record holder Javier Sotomayor of Cuba. The only superior outdoor performances are Sotomayor's world record of 2.45 m, and Mutaz Essa Barshim's clearance of 2.43 m in 2014. Like all modern high jumpers, Thränhardt used the Fosbury Flop style, but of the 16 men in history to have cleared 2.40 m or higher, he was only the second to do so jumping off his right leg. The first was Igor Paklin. At the European Indoor Championships, he won a gold medal in 1983 and four silver medals. Outdoors, his best championship result was winning a bronze medal at the 1986 European Championships. He also reached the Olympic finals in 1984 and 1988.
Donald Thomas is a Bahamian high jumper from Freeport, Bahamas.
Oscar Raise is a retired Italian high jumper.
Bruno Bruni is a retired Italian high jumper.
Ronald Lee Jourdan was an American college and Olympic track and field athlete. Jourdan was a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) champion in the high jump from Florida and member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic team. Jourdan, along with Reynaldo Brown of California, were the last great American high jumpers to use the straight-leg straddle, the style which dominated the sport in the 1950s and 1960s. Jourdan's personal best was 7 feet 3 inches.
The men's high jump field event at the 1972 Olympic Games took place on September 9 and 10 at the Olympiastadion in Munich, Germany. Forty athletes from 26 nations competed. The maximum number of athletes per nation had been set at 3 since the 1930 Olympic Congress. The event was won by Jüri Tarmak of the Soviet Union; he was the last man to win an Olympic gold medal using the straddle technique. The more popular and more widely used Fosbury Flop technique was the most common technique used.
Horst Mandl was an Austrian athlete. He was born in Graz, Steiermark, Austria. He represented Austria in the decathlon at the 1968 Olympics. While he was not able to complete the first day at the Olympics, he was the Austrian National Champion in 110 metres hurdles (1967-1969), high jump, long jump, triple jump 9 times in row (1964-1972), pentathlon (1967-1968) and decathlon.
The men's high jump competition at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was held at the Olympic Stadium between 14–16 August. Forty-four athletes from 28 nations competed. The event was won by Derek Drouin of Canada, the nation's first victory in the men's high jump since 1932. Drouin was the ninth man to win multiple medals in the high jump, after his 2012 bronze. Mutaz Essa Barshim, who had tied Drouin for bronze in 2012, was the tenth multiple medalist in the event. Barshim's silver was Qatar's fifth Olympic medal in any event, and the first better than bronze. Bohdan Bondarenko took bronze, Ukraine's first medal in the men's high jump.
Aleksandr Grigoryev is a former Belarusian high jumper who competed for the Soviet Union. He represented his country at the 1980 Moscow Olympics and was a seven-time Soviet champion. He was a medallist at the European Athletics Championships, IAAF World Cup and multiple times at the European Cup. He held a personal best of 2.30 m.
Hamish Kerr is a New Zealand high jumper. He won the gold medal in the men's high jump at the 2024 Summer Olympics. At the World Indoor Championships he won gold in 2024 having previously won bronze in 2022. He also won gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Kerr is the co-holder of the Oceanian record holder and sole holder of the Oceanian indoor record.
