I love watching The Olympics, but only every 4 years. On even-numbered years. It has become a sporting event like no other, incorporating weight lifting, swimming, track and field, and break dancing.

The Olympics has become very DEI, don’t you think? It used to be synonymous with running and jumping events, but now darn near every human endeavor except Coding has become an Olympic event.

But I have always been entranced by the jumping events, mainly because the force of gravity has always been a challenge for me to overcome. Not so with Olympian jumpers.

I recall a revolutionary change in the high jump event. Originally, the high jumpers would attack the horizontal bar face-on and clear the bar by rotating their whole bodies in a semi-circular path with the bar as the center of rotation.

Then along came Dick Fosbury. In the 1968 Olympics, the high jump event was turned on its head when Fosbury introduced the “Fosbury Flop” to the games and took the gold by a mile. My father took me to an indoor track meet not so long after that, and the fascination was the high jump. Naturally, Dick Fosbury and the Fosbury Flop was something to see, and see it we did.

Now they just call it high jumping.

Advance the clock 56 years to today, and we are witness to another need to revolutionize another jumping event.

The pole vault.

Witnesses to French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati’s attempt to clear the bar at 5.7 m saw him catch the bar with a not-so-small appendage just below his waist, and that ended his run for the event finals.

But this may have opened more doors for Ammirati: he was offered a new gig in the entertainment industry.

I maintain that he could gain more fame and attention – as well as fewer snagged bars – by incorporation of Dick Fosbury’s technique into his own.

They could call it the Ammirati Avoidance.