Profile · Sheboygan, Wisconsin
Patrick Clifford “Pat” Matzdorf
1971 high-jump world-record holder; born in Sheboygan; Sheboygan North and University of Wisconsin
$2 million
Patrick Clifford “Pat” Matzdorf is the Sheboygan high jumper who broke the world record on a third try he did not think he could clear. Born in Sheboygan on December 26, 1949, and a 1968 graduate of Sheboygan North, he was a University of Wisconsin junior when the United States met the Soviet Union in Berkeley on July 3, 1971. His personal best walking in was 7 feet 3 inches. He matched it, then set the American record at 7-4½ on the second attempt. On the third try, at 7 feet 6¼ inches, something in the takeoff felt wrong. He carried it anyway, cleared on the straddle (the old style, already fading after Fosbury’s flop), hit the pad, bounced, and put both hands over his head. He had taken Valery Brumel’s world record at the same meet where Brumel had set it. Sheboygan threw a parade; city crews hung cardboard banners on the streetlights at the exact height. He married Peggy that fall and rode in the parade with her. He also won Pan American Games gold in Cali in 1971 and remains the only Badger athlete with a world record. Dwight Stones took the mark about two years later. Matzdorf, an introvert, was relieved. He switched to the flop in 1974 to spare his knees, managing 7-4¼ in 1975 after a ragged first session at 6-10. The second act was quieter: a mathematics degree, a computer-science master’s, and twenty-five years at Bell Labs writing software for the first commercial cellular system, rolled out in Chicago in 1983. The poles had already made the point.