The high jump is a track and field athletics event in which competitors must jump over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without the aid of certain devices. In its modern most practiced format, auxiliary weights and mounds have been used for assistance; rules have changed over the years. It has been contested since the Olympic Games of ancient Greece. Over the centuries since, competitors have introduced increasingly more effective techniques to arrive at the current form. Javier Sotomayor (Cuba) is the current men's record holder with a jump of 2.45 metres set in 1993, the longest standing record in the history of the men's high jump. Stefka Kostadinova (Bulgaria) has held the women's world record at 2.09 metres since 1987, also the longest-held record in the event.
Read more about High Jump: Rules, History, Declaring The Winner
Famous quotes containing the words high and/or jump:
“I’m a Sunday School teacher, and I’ve always known that the structure of law is founded on the Christian ethic that you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself—a very high and perfect standard. We all know the fallibility of man, and the contentions in society, as described by Reinhold Niebuhr and many others, don’t permit us to achieve perfection.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“The limits of prudence: one cannot jump out of a burning building gradually.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)