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The American Olympic champion Dick Fosbury, who revolutionised the high jump with a technique that became known as the Fosbury Flop, has died. He was 76.<\/p>\n His former agent, Ray Schulte, announced the news on Instagram<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n He wrote<\/a>: \u201cIt is with a very heavy heart I have to release the news that longtime friend and client Dick Fosbury passed away peacefully in his sleep early Sunday morning after a short bout with a recurrence of lymphoma.\u201d<\/p>\n Fosbury shot to fame in 1968, when he won high-jump gold in Mexico City after a final that lasted more than four hours.<\/p>\n His technique<\/a>, honed in college competition in Oregon, involved jumping backwards and arching his back over the bar, thereby reversing and ripping up decades of high-jump orthodoxy. In the span of just five years, he had gone from struggling as a high-school athlete in his hometown, Medford, to winning worldwide fame.<\/p>\n In 2012, Fosbury told the Guardian<\/a> he \u201chad a horrible time dealing with all the attention\u201d that followed his Olympic triumph.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was too much. I was a small-town kid who did something way beyond what I had ever expected to do. I liked the attention, but I wanted it to be over at a point. It didn\u2019t work that way.\u201d<\/p>\n He also said he became \u201cmentally exhausted\u201d because \u201cthere was too much attention. People put me on a pedestal and kept me there. I didn\u2019t want to be on a pedestal. I received my medal and I wanted to be back on the ground with everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n Elsewhere, however, Fosbury said the gold \u201cchanged my life. It brought me gifts, not necessarily monetary. I have met presidents and kings, seen the world and shared my life with wonderful people.\u201d<\/p>\n Fosbury did not compete at the Olympics again but his technique swiftly came to dominate his sport.<\/p>\n In his 2012 Guardian interview, he said of the Fosbury Flop: \u201cI guess it did look kind of weird at first but it felt so natural that, like all good ideas, you just wonder why no one had thought of it before me.\u201d<\/p>\n For the Guardian, Simon Burnton wrote<\/a>: \u201cA couple of people have claimed that they did, most notably the Canadian future world No1 Debbie Brill, who was developing the \u2018Brill Bend\u2019 at around the same time, and was videoed using the technique in 1966<\/a>. \u2018I was quite shocked when I saw Fosbury jump the first time,\u2019 she said. \u2018I thought I was the only one doing it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n