Flip during the long jump

[Hedgehog]

In this morning's local paper, there was an old nostalgia photo of a local kid tumbling over some gymnastics classmates. Memeory tells me that , when in high school, the kid did a flip during the long jump at a track meet.
Can someone give me the thumbnail sketch:

Wasn't that technique outlawed at some point?
Was it an effective technique?

[Texas]

There was a guy who attended Washington or was it WSU back in the day who was doing that. I'm thinking he was jumping/flipping over 24 feet. Trust me I'm really vague on this one. I do remember something about that.

[dukehjsteve]

If I recall correctly the Flip had its very brief heyday in the early 70's. It was outlawed, deemed as unsafe. Whether it would have ultimately been an improvement was never ascertained due to its rapid legal demise.

[Marlow]

Bruce Jenner did the flip for awhile.

[wineturtle]

broken link

[gh]

John Delamere, a Kiwi (he might be a member of parliament now, if memory serves) at Washington State, unveiled his flip at the '75 Pac-8 meet in the LA Coliseum; jumped mid-25s. The crowd went batshit.

Bruce Jenner tried it, PRed, but IAAF banned it, much to his disgust.

A few years before that, as I recall, we had a photo sequence of it, with Tom Ecker working on developing the technique as a coach. The guinea pig athlete, as I recall, was Dave Nielsen, now Stacy Dragila's longtime coach.

[wineturtle]

Did Delamere use it during the 1974 Commonwealth Games ?

[AthleticsInBritain]

In a way, it's a shame it was outlawed. Without wanting to turn the event into a circus act, you can imagine just how much a crowd'd love to see someone somersault to 27'/28'.

[eldrick]

suso kindly pointed out previously that flipping or any other mid-air shenanigans will not increase your distance as centre of gravity remains unaltered thruout the flight, but all those contortions probably will increase wind-resistance compared to standard hitch-kick/hang & you'll end up jumping shorter

[Daisy]

See this related thread from the Darkwing days.

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] ... 19610.html

[paulthefan]

suso kindly pointed out previously that flipping or any other mid-air shenanigans will not increase your distance as centre of gravity remains unaltered thruout the flight, but all those contortions probably will increase wind-resistance compared to standard hitch-kick/hang & you'll end up jumping shorter

correct-a-mondo. If however during a portion of the trajectory the body exhibits less wind resistance then a tiny improvment would be attainted. It may be that the tumble does allow for a segment of the flight path to be taken in a more torpedolike (bodylength forward) posture. Not sure, we need the modelers to get on this.

[Daisy]

suso kindly pointed out previously that flipping or any other mid-air shenanigans will not increase your distance as centre of gravity remains unaltered thruout the flight, but all those contortions probably will increase wind-resistance compared to standard hitch-kick/hang & you'll end up jumping shorter

correct-a-mondo. If however during a portion of the trajectory the body exhibits less wind resistance then a tiny improvment would be attainted. It may be that the tumble does allow for a segment of the flight path to be taken in a more torpedolike (bodylength forward) posture. Not sure, we need the modelers to get on this.

Another issue is take off speed. i have never seen the flip method but if the athlete can generate more take off speed then there could be a significant benefit.

[eldrick]

Another issue is take off speed. i have never seen the flip method but if the athlete can generate more take off speed then there could be a significant benefit.

they don't

i've seen various stats in the past about run up speeds - upto about 5m board before it is flat-out top-end speed but reduces by 5 - 10% at take-off in order to accommodate the board

flip method can at best hope to match that, but i don't see it happening ( likely much more speed reduction required to accommodate the acrobatics )

[tandfman]

John Delamere, a Kiwi (he might be a member of parliament now, if memory serves)

Delamere apparently was, but no longer is, a member of the New Zealand parliament.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuariki_Delamere

[noone]

When they banned it, they gave as reason "Nobody would jump a puddle this way"