Debbie brill biography
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I’ve described what I’m doing practicing sustainability as being an explorer, the Wright brothers, and Roger Bannister. Each comparison had sense, but inom think inom found a better one: Being like Richard Fosbury creating the Fosbury Flop.
He invented a better way to do the high jump. The videos below show how people did it before him and how he developed a new way. Compared to old ways, it looked backward. Nobody did it that way. He wasn’t a great athlete, but he figured out how to do it better. He won Olympic gold. Now everyone does it how he developed. People do what he developed better. He’s happy they do.
Everyone seems to value sustainability, but I know almost no one who actually tries to live sustainably. They have plenty of advice for others to change, but not them. I’ve faced almost only resistance from people, including (especially) environmentalists.
What inom do, like what Fosbury did, looks backward to them. But it works. Like Fosbury, I pr
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Debbie Brill
Biography
Canadian high jumper Debbie Brill made her first of three Olympic appearances at Munich 1972 where she finished eighth, campaigned to have the Games stopped after the Munich massacre, and then quit the sport in it’s wake, disillusioned with the Olympic movement. She returned to competition in time to prepare for her home Olympics at Montréal 1976 where she was eliminated after failing three times at her opening height. In 1979, Brill was the number one high jumper in the world and a gold medal favourite for Moscow 1980 but was unable to compete due to Canada’s boycott. At Los Angeles 1984, Brill had her best Olympic finish of fifth jumping 1.94m (6’4¼”), where three of the top five had been finalists at Munich 1972.
Brill’s impressive international success included winning three Commonwealth Games medals, capturing high jump gold in 1970 (and receiving her medal from Queen Elizabeth II) and 1982, and silver in 1978. At the Pan American Gam
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Wherever you are right now, take a look at the nearest door in your house or workplace. Look up at the height of it. The average interior door is about six feet eight inches or just over two metres in height. Now imagine trying to jump over that door and clear it. Seems almost impossible, doesn’t it?
Well, Debbie Brill could do it.
Remarkably, over thirty years since she retired from international high jump competition in 1988, Debbie remains the only Canadian woman who could. And she did it using a wholly new technique—‘The Brill Bend’—that she herself created and developed and was later adopted around the world as the predominant style of high jumping. It changed the sport. It fundamentally changed how humans jumped—one of the most basic actions humans have attempted since standing upright on two feet.
Think about that.
Some of you reading this are probably thinking ‘what about Dick Fosbury and his more celebrated ‘Fosbury Flop’?’ Well, even Fosbury has publicly acknowledged t