Sport: How High Is a High Jump?

Ever since the Greeks, athletes have been trying to see how far and high they can jump. Inch by inch, specialists raised the record mark until, last June, a towering (6 ft. 8 in.) Texan named Walt Davis rolled himself across a bar 6 ft. 11½ in. high. Last week the official high-jumping world rocked to word that a relatively little (5 ft. 9 in.) Texan at the University of Illinois, using a new technique, had cleared 7 ft. The trouble with the news, from the standpoint of the orthodox: 1) instead of using the conventional running take-off from one foot,...