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| | Perfect competition helps being out innovation, as participants seek a clever way to outdo the others. Competition can often motivate and bring out the best in everyone. | | Perfect competition helps being out innovation, as participants seek a clever way to outdo the others. Competition can often motivate and bring out the best in everyone. |
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| − | Fosbury flop | + | Consider the remarkable, true story of Dick Fosbury. |
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| | + | Dick Fosbury was a skinny young man having apparently little athletic ability. But the beauty of perfect competition is that it brings out the best, and the best is not always the person who others expect to win. |
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| | + | Fosbury's athletic event was the high jump, and he was determined to do his very best and win, no matter what anyone else said. Trouble was, he was such a poor jumper that he "clear" (leap over) only about 5' 3" high. This was, nowhere near what was needed to win any competitions. Not giving up, he worked tirelessly, trying all known techniques for jumping over a bar. Still, he could not improve to the jumping height he needed to win. |
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| | + | He did not give up. The high jump event, like most sports events, is perfectly competitive. There are (1) many participants, (2) athletes who serve as perfect "substitutes" for each other, (3) perfect knowledge in the market (everyone knows what the rules and conditions are), and (4) perfect mobility of resources (everyone has the same access to training opportunities). |
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| | + | Motivated by the opportunity of perfect competition, Fosbury developed a revolutionary style of high jumping. He started jumping back-first over the high bar. Though lacking in athletic gifts of his competitors, the young man improved his jumping ability by a foot, and then even more. He began to win. |
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| | + | His peculiar style attracted mockery and name-calling, as people derided his technique as the "flop". But he showed he did have a special characteristic that others lacked: he did not allow the mockery to bother him. He continued to jump in the direction opposite to all his competitors. With his unique invention of jumping back-first, he won the national college high jump event. But experts still considered his success to be a fluke and his approach to be a joke. They still refused to take Fosbury or is "flop" seriously. |
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| | + | When it came time for the [[Olympics]] in 1968, no one considered the young man to have a chance, and more athletic competitors were favorites to win the high jump event. But remember that this is perfect competition, and it does not matter what the experts say. |
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| | + | The whole world was riveted to the television screen as Dick Fosbury flawlessly cleared every height as the bar was raised again and again. When the bar was finally raised to an Olympic record height of 7' 4 1/4", only the young man and his "flop" were able to jump over it. He won the gold medal. |
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| | + | Immediately everyone else, including those who had mercilessly mocked him, began praising and imitating his style. To this day it is known as the "Fosbury Flop."<ref>http://www.usatf.org/halloffame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=57</ref> |
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| | + | == Review == |
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| | <Rule Against Perpetuities> | | <Rule Against Perpetuities> |