The Fosbury Flop, the Cruyff Turn and other eponymous techniques

Dick Fosbury, the lanky leaper who completely revamped the technical discipline of high jump and won an Olympic gold medal with his “Fosbury Flop,” died Sunday age 76.

Here are some others forever immortalised in their sport.

The Fosbury Flop

Dick Fosbury lending his name to a flop. Hardly seems a fair moniker for the complicated coordination of reverse leaping which allowed athletes to go higher than ever before.

It is a pity for the world that the American, who emerged from nowhere to win high jump gold at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, beat the Canadian Debbie Brill to naming rights.

The had both – separately, and without knowledge of the other – been working a new technique. Had Brill got there first, Javier Sotomayor et al would now be masters of The Brill Bend instead.

The Cruyff Turn

Most people who play football, from novice standard upward, can do this manouevre. Its greatness lies in its simplicity.

“Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is,” its progenitor – the late Johan Cruyff – once said, in one of his myriad profound musings on the game.

Jan Olsson, the Swedish defender at the 1974 World Cup, is still able to dine out on the fact he was the first to be flummoxed by this Cruyff trick on international television.

But Dutch supporters had been wowed by it so often before then, it had already become as regulation as it is today.

The Panenka

Cruyff was variously described as a genius, the Father of Modern Football, and Pythagoras in Football Boots. Antonin Panenka? Not so much.

Still, while all-time great Cruyff gave his name to a workaday trick, Panenka’s legacy is one of the most audacious tactics in the sport: the softly chipped penalty.

At first, the Bohemians Prague playmaker hatched the skill while competing with his club goalkeeper at training. The stakes at that point were chocolate.

It ended up winning Czechoslovakia the 1976 European Championship, via a penalty shoot-out with West Germany.

The Dilscoop

This natty neologism morphs a description of scooping the ball directly over the wicketkeeper in cricket with the surname of its first proponent: Tillakaratne Dilshan.

Nasser Hussain, the England captain turned commentator, originally called it The Dilshan. That was one of many initial attempts to attribute a name to the new shot for the Twenty20 generation.

None of them have ever sat that well with Dilshan’s teammates, though.

“In our dressing room it will always be The Starfish,” Mahela Jayawardene said. “You have to have no brains to be playing a shot like that.”

And one that isn’t, but sounds like it should be ...

The Garryowen

Not a bloke called Garry Owen, but a place in Ireland. The high, punted, up-and-under kick in rugby was named after the team that first used it, to great success in the 1920s.

UPI facts

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Why are asylum seekers being housed in hotels?

The number of asylum applications in the UK has reached a new record high, driven by those illegally entering the country in small boats crossing the English Channel.

A total of 111,084 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, the highest number for any 12-month period since current records began in 2001.

Asylum seekers and their families can be housed in temporary accommodation while their claim is assessed.

The Home Office provides the accommodation, meaning asylum seekers cannot choose where they live.

When there is not enough housing, the Home Office can move people to hotels or large sites like former military bases.

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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.