Valeriy Brumel

Brumel was the master of the straddle, rolling face-down over the bar with a powerful, sprint-fast approach. He raised the world record six times, to 2.28m in 1963, and won Olympic gold in Tokyo in 1964 after silver in Rome. A motorcycle crash in 1965 shattered his leg, and his long comeback under the surgeon Gavriil Ilizarov, eventually clearing 2.06m again, became as famous as his jumping.