High Jump Explained: Rules, Technique, and World Records

The high jump is a track and field event where athletes sprint a curved approach, take off from one foot, and try to clear a horizontal bar without knocking it down — a discipline dominated since the 1970s by the backward-arching Fosbury Flop, with a men’s world record of 2.45 m (Javier Sotomayor, 1993) and a women’s world record of 2.10 m (Yaroslava Mahuchikh, 2024). Every elite jumper today uses the same basic shape: a J-curved run-up, a single explosive take-off, and a mid-air arch that carries the body — but not the center of mass — over the bar. Here’s exactly how the event works, from the run-up to the countback rule that decides ties.

What Is the World Record in the High Jump?

As of 2026, the record book looks like this. Sotomayor’s 2.45 m clearance in Salamanca, Spain on July 27, 1993 is the longest-standing record in the men’s event — no one has gotten within 6 cm of it in over three decades. The women’s record changed far more recently: Mahuchikh cleared 2.10 m at the Meeting de Paris on July 7, 2024, finally breaking Stefka Kostadinova’s 2.09 m mark from the 1987 World Championships in Rome, a record that had stood for 37 years.

Record	Holder	Mark	Year & Location
Men’s outdoor	Javier Sotomayor (Cuba)	2.45 m	1993, Salamanca, Spain
Women’s outdoor	Yaroslava Mahuchikh (Ukraine)	2.10 m	2024, Paris, France
Men’s indoor	Javier Sotomayor (Cuba)	2.43 m	1989
Women’s indoor	Kajsa Bergqvist (Sweden)	2.08 m	2006

How Does the Curved J-Approach Work?

Jumpers don’t run straight at the bar. The classic approach is J-shaped: the first several strides are run in a straight line to build horizontal speed, then the final four or five steps bend into a curve. Leaning into that curve lets the athlete drop their center of gravity before take-off — without bending the knee as much as a straight approach would require — which buys extra time to convert that speed into an upward push at the plant. The curve also naturally rotates the jumper’s shoulders and hips so their back faces the bar exactly as they leave the ground, setting up the flop without any wasted mid-air twisting.

What Is the Fosbury Flop, and Why Did It Replace the Straddle?

The Fosbury Flop is the technique of taking off facing away from the bar and arching backward over it, head and shoulders first, landing on the upper back. Oregon State student Dick Fosbury introduced it at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and won gold; by the 1972 Munich Games, 28 of 40 finalists had switched to it. Before Fosbury, the dominant technique was the straddle — face-down, rolling over the bar chest-first — which itself had replaced the earlier western roll, eastern cut-off, and scissors styles used through the early 1900s.

The flop won out for a simple physics reason: because the jumper’s body curves around the bar at the top of the jump, their center of mass can pass below the bar even while every part of their body clears above it. Straddle and scissors jumpers had to lift their entire center of mass over the bar, which wastes vertical effort the flop simply doesn’t need. The technique only became possible once foam and air-filled landing mats replaced sand and sawdust pits, since landing on your back requires real cushioning.

How Many Attempts Do You Get, and What Counts as a Foul?

Each athlete gets three attempts at any given height, but misses carry forward: three consecutive failures at any height or combination of heights eliminates the jumper, even if those misses happened at three different bar heights. A jump fails if the athlete dislodges the bar, takes off from both feet instead of one, or touches the ground or landing area beyond the vertical plane of the bar before clearing it. Athletes are also allowed to “pass” — decline an attempt at the current height to save attempts for a taller bar later, a common tactic once the bar reaches heights unlikely to be missed.

How Are Ties Broken in High Jump?

World Athletics uses a countback system. If two or more athletes clear the same final height, the tie goes first to whoever had fewer misses at that specific height, then to whoever had fewer total misses across the whole competition. If competitors remain tied for first place after both checks, they go to a jump-off — alternating single attempts at rising heights (or, in some formats, a falling bar) until one clears and the other doesn’t.

Countback decided real Olympic history: at the Paris 2024 Games, Mahuchikh won gold over Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers after both cleared 2.00 m, with Mahuchikh holding fewer misses. And at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Mutaz Barshim of Qatar and Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy both cleared 2.37 m with identical records and, facing a jump-off, chose instead to share the gold medal — a decision that became one of the most talked-about moments of the Games.

What Are the Official Bar, Mat, and Runway Dimensions?

Element	Specification
Crossbar length	3.98 m – 4.02 m
Crossbar diameter	25 mm – 30 mm (lightweight, e.g., fiberglass)
Crossbar weight	Maximum 2 kg
Landing mat (World Athletics)	Minimum 6 m × 4 m, roughly 0.7 m thick
Minimum runway (approach) length	15 m, ideally 25 m or more
Take-off	Single foot only

Step-by-Step: How to Execute a Fosbury Flop

1. Approach — 8 to 12 strides, straight for the first two-thirds, curving into a J for the final 4–5 steps, accelerating the whole way.
2. Plant — the take-off foot (the one farther from the bar) plants firmly, almost flat, at roughly a 90-degree angle to the bar rather than pointed at it.
3. Take-off — a powerful upward drive off that single foot, arms swinging up to help vertical lift, hips already starting to rotate away from the bar.
4. Arch — at peak height, the jumper’s back arches over the bar, head and shoulders leading, hips lifting last, chin tucked toward the chest to keep the hips clear.
5. Clearance and kick-out — as the hips pass over, the knees and lower legs whip upward and over to avoid brushing the bar on the way down.
6. Landing — the jumper lands flat on their upper back and shoulders on the mat, never on the neck or head.

Who Are the Greatest High Jumpers in History?

Beyond the two current world-record holders, a handful of names define the modern era. Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar owns a personal best of 2.43 m — the second-highest mark ever recorded — and is a three-time world champion (2017, 2019, 2022) along with that shared Tokyo 2020 Olympic gold. On the women’s side, Mahuchikh’s 2024 world record capped a run that also included Olympic gold in Paris and the world outdoor title, cementing her as the sport’s dominant current jumper. Stefka Kostadinova’s 2.09 m from 1987 remains the second-best women’s mark ever recorded, still unbeaten by anyone other than Mahuchikh nearly four decades later.

The high jump is one piece of a much larger discipline — see our full track and field events guide for how it fits alongside sprints, throws, and the other jumps. It’s most directly comparable to two other vertical and horizontal jumping events: the pole vault, which uses a pole to clear a far higher bar, and the long jump, which trades vertical clearance for horizontal distance off a similar sprint approach.