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The scissors is a style used in the athletics event of high jump. [1]
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| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2013) |
The scissors is a style used in the athletics event of high jump. [1]
As it allows jumpers to land on their feet, it is the style most often used by junior athletes where the landing surface is not deep or soft enough to meet full competition standards.
The approach (or run-up) in the scissors is a straight line at 30 to 50 degrees to the bar, jumping over the lowest point of the bar which is usually the centre. Speed is brisk, simply to ensure horizontal travel over the bar, but not a full-out sprint, as there is little chance to resolve forward motion into vertical motion at take-off. Horizontal acceleration should be complete by take-off, with the shoulders held high and the take-off leg (the outside leg in the case of the scissors style) flexing to launch the jumper into the air.
At take-off the leg nearer the bar (the lead leg) is held straight and swung into the air to clear the bar. At exactly the same time the hips and body are driven into the air by the take-off leg. As the jumper crosses the bar, the trailing or take-off leg has to be quickly swung up to clear the bar. If this occurs as the lead leg crosses and clears the bar, the lead leg can be driven downwards, helping to keep the athlete's centre of mass closer to the bar (in other words, enabling clearance of a higher bar). This up-down/up movement of the legs can best be described as a scissoring action.
Once the take-off leg has left the ground (but not before) the athlete should attempt to pull the upper body face down towards the knee, also to keep the centre of mass as close as possible to the bar. Care must be taken not to hit the head against the knee.
Driving or swinging the arms into the air at take-off provides additional upwards momentum. The arms can be brought back to the sides during clearance, as a further measure to keep the centre of mass as close as possible to the bar. Even with these measures, it is clear that the bar remains considerably below the centre of mass, so the scissors is far from an optimal clearance technique. Landing from the scissors is usually on the feet, but a landing area of soft matting or sand is desirable to reduce foot impact.
Until the invention of the eastern cut-off by Michael Sweeney in the 1890s, high jumpers used fairly primitive variants of the basic scissors style. One of the most eminent of these early jumpers was Marshall Brooks of Oxford University, who achieved the first jump of 6 ft (1.83 m) on 17 March 1876. A few weeks later he improved this mark to 6 ft 21⁄2 inches (1.89 m). This record stood until 1880 when Patrick Davin of Ireland jumped 6 ft 23⁄4 inches (1.90 m). [2] These jumpers ran straight at the bar in a style not unlike long-jumping with legs and hips lifted. Indeed, Davin was also holder of the world long jump record. The next world record in high jump was perhaps the first achieved with a true scissors style.
In 1887 the high jump record was captured by a US athlete, William Byrd-Page of the University of Pennsylvania, first with a clearance of 6 ft 31⁄4 inches, and later 6 ft 4 inches (1.93 m). [3] Thereafter, all world high jump records until 1957 were set by US athletes. (For this reason, we state the records in feet and inches for greater accuracy, since that is how they were originally measured.)
Byrd-Page's record was first bettered by Michael Sweeney, inventor of the eastern cut-off mentioned above. Sweeney jumped 6 ft 55⁄8 inches in 1895, a record that stood until 1912. 1912 was the last time that the men's world record was held by a variant of the scissors style, however the women's world was held in the 1960s by the eastern cut-off jumper Iolanda Balas of Romania.
The eastern cut-off was undoubtedly the most natural and successful variation of the scissors technique. But a few jumpers achieved world-class performances with another variation, the so-called modified scissors. [4] In the modified scissors, the upper body leans back after takeoff, leading to a layout on the back above the bar. This gives a very efficient clearance, but it made for an uncomfortable landing in the early days, when the jumper typically fell into a sandpit.
The first successful exponent of the modified scissors was Clinton Larson of Brigham University, in Provo, Utah, who was US champion in 1917. Larson is credited with an exhibition jump of 6 ft 8 inches (2.03m), which exceeded the world record of the time, held by western roller Edward Beeson. More than 30 years later, the style was reinvented by Bob Barksdale of Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Barksdale achieved an official clearance of 6 ft 9 inches (2.05m) in early 1956, when the world record stood at 6 ft 111⁄2 inches (2.12m). His technique differed from Larson's in a small but significant way: his head slightly preceded his hips in crossing the bar. In Larson's time there was a "no diving" rule which disallowed such a jump. When the rule was repealed, in the late 1930s, the main result was the development of "dive" variants of the western roll and straddle techniques. But it also opened the possibility of a "back dive" scissors, and Barksdale's technique was a first step in that direction.
A full-blown "back dive scissors" is none other than the Fosbury flop, used almost universally today (though of course the "scissors" part has essentially vanished). In a nice recapitulation of high jump history, flop jumpers sometimes use the scissors when warming up. For a good example, see the video of Stefan Holm nonchalantly scissoring over 2.10m while still wearing his track suit, [5] or Mutaz Barshim over 2.16m at training. [6]
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 introduced increasingly effective techniques to arrive at the current form, and the current universally preferred method is the Fosbury Flop, in which athletes run towards the bar and leap head first with their back to the bar.
The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a takeoff point. Along with the triple jump, the two events that measure jumping for distance as a group are referred to as the "horizontal jumps". This event has a history in the ancient Olympic Games and has been a modern Olympic event for men since the first Olympics in 1896 and for women since 1948.
The triple jump, sometimes referred to as the hop, step and jump or the hop, skip and jump, is a track and field event, similar to long jump. As a group, the two events are referred to as the "horizontal jumps". The competitor runs down the track and performs a hop, a bound and then a jump into the sand pit. The triple jump was inspired by the ancient Olympic Games and has been a modern Olympics event since the Games' inception in 1896.
Richard Douglas Fosbury was an American high jumper, who is considered one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field. He won a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics, revolutionizing the high jump event with a "back-first" technique now known as the Fosbury flop. His method was to sprint diagonally towards the bar, then curve and leap backwards over the bar, which gave him a much lower center of mass in flight than traditional techniques. This approach has seen nearly universal adoption since Fosbury's performance in Mexico. Though he never returned to the Olympics, Fosbury continued to be involved in athletics after retirement and served on the executive board of the World Olympians Association.
The Fosbury flop is a jumping style used in the track and field sport of high jump. It was popularized and perfected by American athlete Dick Fosbury, whose gold medal in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City brought it to the world's attention. The flop became the dominant style of the event; before Fosbury, most elite jumpers used the straddle technique, Western Roll, Eastern cut-off or scissors jump to clear the bar. Though the backwards flop technique had been known for years before Fosbury, landing surfaces had been sandpits or low piles of matting and high jumpers had to land on their feet or at least land carefully to prevent injury. With the advent of deep foam matting, high jumpers were able to be more adventurous in their landing styles and hence experiment with styles of jumping.
The first world record in the men's high jump was recognised by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in 1912.
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, with which it is sometimes confused.
Ivan Sergeyevich Ukhov is a Russian high jumper. He won a gold medal at the 2010 IAAF World Indoor Championships and is a two-time European Indoor champion. He was also the silver medallist at the 2010 European Athletics Championships and the winner of the high jump at the inaugural 2010 IAAF Diamond League. In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, he won the gold medal, but it was later stripped for a doping violation.
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.
The Western roll was a high jump technique invented by George Horine of Stanford University. This technique was succeeded by the straddle.
The eastern cut-off is a variant of the "scissors" high jump style involving a layout. This enables the jumper to clear a higher bar than with the traditional scissors style, while still landing on the feet. The technique is generally credited to Michael Sweeney of the New York Athletic Club, who used it in 1895 to set a world record of 6 ft 5 5/8 inches . The style came to be called "eastern" because of its origin on the US east coast, after the invention of the rival "western roll" style by George Horine on the west coast (Stanford). Horine was in fact the first to improve on Sweeney's record, when he cleared 6 ft 7 inches in 1912.
Bohdan Viktorovych Bondarenko is a Ukrainian high jumper. He is the 2013 World champion, 2014 European champion, and 2016 Olympic bronze medalist.
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Gianmarco Tamberi is an Italian high jumper, current Olympic champion (2020), European outdoor champion (2022) and World outdoor champion (2023).
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.
The men's high jump at the 2017 World Championships in Athletics was held at the Olympic Stadium on 11 and 13 August.
The men's high jump event at the 2020 Summer Olympics took place between 30 July and 1 August 2021 at the Olympic Stadium. 33 athletes from 24 nations competed; the total possible number depended on how many nations would use universality places to enter athletes in addition to the 32 qualifying through mark or ranking. Italian athlete Gianmarco Tamberi along with Qatari athlete Mutaz Essa Barshim emerged as joint winners of the event following a tie between both of them as they cleared 2.37m. Both Tamberi and Barshim agreed to share the gold medal in a rare instance where athletes of different nations had agreed to share the same medal in the history of the Olympics. Barshim in particular was heard to ask a competition official "Can we have two golds?" in response to being offered a "jump off". Maksim Nedasekau of Belarus took bronze. The medals were the first ever in the men's high jump for Italy and Belarus, the first gold in the men's high jump for Italy and Qatar, and the third consecutive medal in the men's high jump for Qatar. Barshim became only the second man to earn 3 medals in high jump, joining Patrik Sjöberg of Sweden (1984–92).
The men's high jump at the 2019 World Athletics Championships was held at the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha from 1 to 4 October.
The men's high jump at the 2022 World Athletics Championships was held at the Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, on 15 and 18 July.