Dick Fosbury heads Olympians

Dick Fosbury, the athlete who revolutionised the high jump in 1968, is the new President of the World Olympians Association (WOA) for the next four years. He succeeds Pál Schmitt, double Olympic team fencing champion, who is also an IOC member, and who was WOA President from 1999 to 2007. The election of Dick Fosbury took place last weekend at the WOA General Assembly at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne.

A jump which entered history
It was in Mexico City in 1968 that Richard Douglas “Dick” Fosbury entered Olympic history, The 1968 Games marked not only the Fosbury’s debuts on the international stage, which were crowned by the supreme title and an Olympic record, but also these Games were the birthplace of a revolutionary technique in the high jump. This new style of jumping, to which he gave his name – the Fosbury flop – is still the most used technique in the world today.

Two female WOA Vice-Presidents
The 130 Olympians meeting in Lausanne elected their colleagues Canadian Charmaine Crooks and Bulgarian Stefka Kostadinova to the WOA Executive Committee as Vice Presidents. Joël Bouzou (France) is the new Treasurer, and Anthony Ledgard (Peru) becomes Secretary General. George Andreadis (Greece), Kieren Perkins (Australia), El Hadj Amadou Dia Ba (Senegal) and Daichi Suzuki (Japan) join the Executive Committee as members.


128 national associations Created after the Centennial Olympic Congress, held in Paris in 1994, the WOA is an independent international organisation representing all the Olympians of the 128 national associations. The WOA has many objectives: to disseminate the Olympic ideals, propose educational and environmental protection programmes, fight against doping, violence and intolerance, and take part in charitable programmes centred on sport.