The Wizard of Foz: Dick Fosbury’s One-Man High-Jump Revolution
About this audiobook
In 1968, perhaps the finest US Olympic men’s track-and-field team ever stirred the world in unprecedented ways, among them the victory stand black rights protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos in Mexico City. But in competition no single athlete mirrored the free-thinking 1960s better than Dick Fosbury, a failed prep high jumper who invented an offbeat style that ultimately won him a gold medal and revolutionized the event. No jumpers today use any other style than his.
Yet few know the struggles Fosbury endured to achieve his success, as he and Bob Welch recount in The Wizard of Foz. From the tragic death of a younger brother to nearly dying himself, from flunking out of college to nearly being drafted, Fosbury cleared far more obstacles than a high-jump bar. And even when he had seemingly made the US Olympic Team, he faced a “redo” that nobody saw coming.
This book tells a story of loss, survival, and triumph, twined in a person (Fosbury), a time (the 1960s), and a place (a fantasy-like Olympic Trials venue high in the Sierra Nevada) clearly made for each other. It is a story of a young man who refused to listen to those who laughed at him, those who doubted him, and those who tried to make him someone he was not.
About the author
Bob Welch is an author, speaker, and award-winning columnist who has served as an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He has written more than twenty books, and as a columnist for the Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon, is a two-time winner of the National Society of Newspaper Columnist’s best writing award. Welch lives in Eugene, Oregon.
Dick Fosbury is known worldwide as the inventor of the Fosbury Flop high-jump style, with which he won the Olympic gold medal in 1968. After competing, he followed the passion of his youth—civil engineering—at Oregon State University and supplemented that with an array of the numerous opportunities that came his way, many because of his “Fosbury Flop” fame. The USA Olympic Hall of Famer travels the world, inspiring young athletes and corporate partners alike while promoting track and field. Fosbury resides in Bellevue, Idaho.
Grover Gardner has recorded more than 650 audiobooks since beginning his career in 1981. He's been named one of the "Best Voices of the Century" as well as a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine. Gardner has garnered over 20 AudioFile Earphones Awards and is the recipient of an Audio Publishers Association Audie Award, as well as a three-time finalist. In 2005, Publishers Weekly deemed him "Audiobook Narrator of the Year." Gardner has also narrated hundreds of audiobooks under the names Tom Parker and Alexander Adams. Among his many titles are Marcus Sakey's At the City's Edge, as well as Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and John Irving's The Cider House Rules. Gardner studied Theater and Art History at Rollins College and received a Master's degree in Acting from George Washington University. He lives in Oregon with his significant other and daughter.
