LOS ANGELES – Athletics legend Dick Fosbury – who revolutionised high jumping with his signature “Fosbury flop” – has died at the age of 76, his agent said on Monday.

Ray Schulte said in a statement that the 1968 Olympics gold medallist had died peacefully in his sleep from lymphoma on Sunday.

Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1947, Fosbury became one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field for developing the innovative high-jumping technique which upended his sport in the 1960s.

Prior to his emergence, high jumpers typically attempted the “straddle technique” in which they would take off face forward while attempting to twist their body mid-leap over the bar.

Fosbury, however, turned the conventional wisdom on its head with his new approach which would become immortalised as the “Fosbury Flop” and remains today the standard technique used by elite high jumpers.

Instead of tackling the bar head on, the rangy 1.93m Fosbury would arc towards the bar on his run-up before taking off backwards and “flopping” over the bar.

“Few athletes in history have done their thing as uniquely as Dick Fosbury,” former United States high jump coach John Tansley wrote in 1980.

“He literally turned his event upside down.”

Fosbury first began experimenting with new ways of high jumping while still in school, hitting upon his new technique in 1963 during a competition in which he jumped a personal best of 1.65m using an old technique.

“Then they raised the bar and I knew I had to try something different to get over it,” Fosbury told Athletics Weekly in 2011.

“I knew I had to lift my hips up and to do that I needed to get my shoulders back out of the way. And I cleared the bar at the next height, eventually jumping 1.77m so I improved by 15cm that day.”

It was not until 1968, however, that Fosbury’s new approach gained global attention.

Victory at the US college championships was followed by a win at the US Olympic trials in Los Angeles. At the Mexico City Olympics, Fosbury captured the gold medal after clearing a height of 2.24m with his third jump – a new Olympic and US record.

His performances at the Olympics electrified the stadium, with Mexican fans delighted by the American college student’s bold approach.

He later said that he never saw himself as a revolutionary, and did not anticipate that his style would become the standard technique for high jumping.

At the 1972 Munich Games, 28 of 40 competitors in the discipline had adopted his style.

“I thought that after I won the gold, one or two jumpers would start using it, but I never really contemplated that it would become the universal technique,” Fosbury said in 2012. AFP