High Jump (c. 1900)

This lantern slide, “High Jump (c. 1900),” shows a young man performing the high jump at the International YMCA Training School (now known as Springfield College). The young man is about to clear or has just cleared the pole and has one leg stuck out and one hanging down and is in a seated position.The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors jump over a horizontal bar without a pole. Track and Field contains a series of athletic competitions based on running, jumping, and throwing. The name comes from the venue: a stadium with an oval running track around a grass field. The first recorded examples of organized track and field events at a sports festival are the Ancient Olympic Games in 776 BC. The stone put and weight throw competitions popular among Celtic societies in Ireland and Scotland were precursors to the modern shot put and hammer throw events. One of the last track and field events to develop was the pole vault, which stemmed from 18th century competitions in the Northern European Lowlands. Discrete modern track and field competitions, separate from general sporting festivals, were first recorded in the 19th century