Kenyan schoolboys take scissors style of jumping to new heights

The video shows both athletes with their whole body well above the bar, using the inefficient scissors style that went out of vogue at international level by 1912. Yet the height which the Kenyan teenager cleared would have won the first four Olympic titles and would have taken a medal until 1928. Indeed, he was a centimetre higher than the 1.90m cleared by the sixth, seventh and eighth-placed Olympic finalists in London in 1948. These included European champion Alan Paterson, last Scot to appear in an Olympic final. Paterson used the much more effective straddle, the preferred style until Dick Fosbury's flop revolutionised the event at the 1968 Olympics.

The Kenyan kids are seen jumping into roughly-dug earth (no foam pit) between the kind of quadrangular wooden-plinth high jump stands which were last in vogue in Britain in the 1950s. The boys, one of them bare-footed, land upright. "They are in form 1/2, which means they could be as young as 14, but possibly 19; you can have a five-year range in the Kenyan system," says Stewart, who filmed them.

Extravagant internet claims suggest the pair cleared 2m, but we tracked down Stewart to confirm the facts, still sufficiently amazing to require no exaggeration.

Stewart, 1.78m tall, said: "The winner was two or three centimetres smaller than me. He wore a pair of trainers, probably bought second-hand or in the market for 2000 shillings (£15) or less. He was not wearing spikes. No athletes in Kenya have new shoes except for the shoe companies' sponsored athletes."

High jump is about as unfashionable in Kenya as bobsleigh. Endurance running has taken thousands of Kenyans out of poverty and has lured dozens into switching their nationality for a fistful of petro dollars. That's their heritage. Not one Kenyan is ranked among the world's top 50 high jumpers, but of the 50 fastest marathon runners ever, 37 are Kenyan. The two lads on the video are Kalenjin, the tribe of Kip Keino, father of Kenyan running.

Stewart, an environmental engineering student, lived in Kenya with Laban Rotich, the former African and Commonwealth 1500m champion, also a Kalenjin. He has been helping Stewart with development projects, such as water and cattle dips, for Run for Life.

The video has prompted a little financial support, but shoe companies which make fortunes from the country's runners, have offered nothing, despite the pair's incredible potential. Could this be because there's a global market in running shoes, but not in high jump spikes?

"There has been no support or commercial contact, though a few people have offered to donate money," says Stewart. "There are no proper facilities, training advice or even proper shoes."

History's first recorded high jump contest was in Scotland, with the inaugural world record (5ft 2in/1.57m) set in 1827 at Innerleithen, by Adam Wilson. He was a member of Edinburgh's six-foot club, to which only those of at least 1.83m were admitted.

Thomas Anderson, a diminutive man known as Tam The Rat, took the world best from him two years later (5ft 3in, 1.60). He ran straight at the bar, head-on, knees tucked up – even more primitive than scissors. More than a dozen world bests, for money, were made by Scots, including iconic strong man Donald Dinnie, at venues all over Fife, Angus and the Borders. The last was in 1868. No world record has been made in Scotland since.

The first 2m jump was by George Horine (western roll) in 1912. He was obliged to devise the western roll because the lay-out of the back garden of his new home, where he practised, would allow him to run only from the left.

The first seven-footer, in 1956, was by Charley Dumas (straddle) in the 1956 US Olympic trials. He missed a rendezvous with his coach and had to buy a $3 entry ticket. Then a guard tried to exclude him from the dressing room. After that the record was easy.

Edinburgh's Ross Hepburn, who set world age-group bests at 13 and 14 (2.04m), using the flop, competed at the 1976 Debenham Games in London against Olympic champion Jacek Wszola. Still the youngest ever British senior internationalist, Hepburn recalls the Pole effortlessly scissoring over 2.10m in the warm-up. He subsequently set a world best of 2.35m.

Scissors progressively was overtaken by more economic styles which could keep the centre of gravity as much as 30% lower. Outstanding flop and straddle exponents can keep their centre of gravity below the height of the bar. Straddlers do this by rotating laterally along the length of the bar, while floppers arch backwards directly over it, keeping legs down until the torso is descending. Hence the gangly Scottish record-holder (2.31m) Geoff Parsons being known as The Praying Mantis.

Older aficionados will point to world records set, post Fosbury, using the straddle: Vladimir Yashchenko (2.35) and Rosemarie Ackermann (2.00). Indeed, some of the old school still insist that a straddle jumper with outstanding core strength might challenge the current world best of 2.45m by Cuban Javier Sotomayor, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

The flop is easier to master, so beginners improve faster. Yet, however compelling it may seem that 55 men have now jumped higher than Yashchenko, last of the straddlers, I have yet to read convincing proof of significant biomechanical advantages for the flop.

Kids like those in Kenya, if properly nurtured, could yet be Sotomayor's successor, probably by flopping. Yet the old guard will pray for restoration of the aesthetically pleasing straddle, proving the flop simply a transient fashion.

n Stewart is trying to raise contributions, including old shoes, equipment, and school books. Visit:

www.runforlife.ca/contribute/donate

The video itself can be seen at:

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/world-of-sport/school-high-jumpers