49 Fun Facts About Pole Vault

Modern pole vault poles are usually made from which materials?

Fiberglass or carbon fiber. Since the early 1960s these flexible poles have bent under the vaulter's take-off and whipped straight again, catapulting the athlete upward in a way stiff poles never could.

American-born Olympic pole vault champion Armand Duplantis competes for which country?

Sweden. His mother is Swedish, and at 15 he chose her country over the land of his birth, partly because Sweden's vault coach offered his father a place on the coaching team.

Armand Duplantis was born and raised in which US state?

Louisiana. He grew up in Lafayette and spent a year at Louisiana State University before turning professional in 2019, then broke the world record for the first time early the next year.

Armand Duplantis's childhood nickname 'Mondo' is a word from which language?

Italian. A family friend took to calling the small boy 'Mondo Man' and the short form stuck; mondo is Italian for 'world', which suited a future world record holder.

With Olympic gold already secured in 2024, what did Armand Duplantis do next?

Broke his own world record. Having won with 6.00 m, he took the Olympic record at 6.10 m, then cleared 6.25 m on his third and final try, a centimetre above his old mark.

Why did Sergey Bubka usually raise the world record just a centimetre at a time?

Bonus money. With a payment riding on every new mark, he preferred to edge the bar up a centimetre at a time, from 5.85 m in 1984 to 6.14 m ten years later.

Sergey Bubka became the first vaulter to clear six metres in 1985 in which city?

Paris. Bubka went over 6.00 m there in 1985; a sprinter's speed and strength let him use longer, stiffer poles than his rivals and grip them several inches higher.

How did Sergey Bubka respond when Thierry Vigneron took his world record in Rome in 1984?

Won it back that evening. France's Vigneron cleared 5.91 m, only for Bubka to go over 5.94 m on his next attempt minutes later; it was the only time he lost the outdoor record in his career.

Six-time world champion Sergey Bubka won his only Olympic gold medal at which Games?

Seoul 1988. The Soviet boycott kept him out of Los Angeles, and afterwards he failed to clear a height in Barcelona, withdrew injured from Atlanta and missed the final at his last Games in 2000.

In which Ukrainian city, Bubka's home base, did Lavillenie set his 6.16 m pole vault record in 2014?

Donetsk. The mark he beat, Bubka's 6.15 m, had been set in the same city in 1993, and Bubka was in the stands at his own Pole Vault Stars meeting to stand and applaud his successor.

Renaud Lavillenie has raced motorcycles in which event?

Le Mans 24 Hours. He rode in the motorcycle edition of the endurance race in 2013, a year after his Olympic gold, finished 25th and came back to chase a top-20 place in 2014.

Who in 2005 became the first woman to pole vault five metres?

Yelena Isinbayeva. At a London meeting in July 2005 she first raised her own world record to 4.96 m, then had the bar put up to 5.00 m and cleared that as well.

Which sport did Yelena Isinbayeva train in as a child before switching to pole vault at 15?

Gymnastics. A growth spurt at 15 left her too tall for it, so she picked up a pole instead and within six months had won the World Youth Games.

Yelena Isinbayeva was banned from which Olympics after Russia's state-doping revelations?

Rio 2016. Russia's track and field team was barred, and she announced her retirement during the Games, a day after fellow athletes voted her on to the IOC's athletes' commission.

Women's pole vault became a full Olympic medal event at which Games?

Sydney 2000. Men had vaulted at every Games since 1896, but the women's event was young: its first official world record dates only from 1992.

Which American won the first Olympic gold medal in the women's pole vault?

Stacy Dragila. A college track all-rounder who also competed in rodeo as a goat roper, she tried the vault only when her coach suggested it, then won the event's first world titles indoors and out as well.

What did Japan's Shuhei Nishida and Sueo Oe do with their 1936 Olympic silver and bronze medals?

Cut and fused them half-and-half. The two friends had finished level and were placed second and third, so back home they had the medals cut and rejoined as two 'friendship medals', each half silver, half bronze.

Before vaulting for height took over in the 1800s, pole jumping contests rewarded what?

Distance. Poles began as a practical way over ditches, brooks and fences, and ancient Greek jumpers competed to leap the furthest; clearing a bar for height became a sport only in the mid-nineteenth century.

World Athletics traces modern pole vaulting to a height contest held in 1843 in which country?

England. Members of the football and cricket club in Ulverston staged it; German gymnasts took up the format in the 1850s, and by 1896 it was an event at the first modern Olympics.

Dutch Warmerdam set his 1940s world records with a pole made of what?

Bamboo. Warmerdam was the last to set major records with it, clearing 15 feet 43 times before any rival managed it once; the second man got there only in 1951, seven years after he retired.

How did Poland's Władysław Kozakiewicz answer the jeering Moscow crowd as he won 1980 Olympic gold?

With a defiant arm gesture. He won with a world record amid the whistles; the Soviet ambassador demanded he be stripped of the medal, in vain, and Poles came to call the salute 'Kozakiewicz's gesture'.

Why did 15-foot pioneer Dutch Warmerdam never compete at an Olympics?

The Second World War cancelled them. The 1940 and 1944 Games fell while he held the world record, and he retired from top competition in 1944, though he went on vaulting for fun into his sixties.

Olympic champion Bob Richards, the 'Vaulting Vicar', was church minister to which future tennis great in her teens?

Billie Jean King. When Richards asked the young teenager what she was going to do with her life, she told him: 'Reverend, I'm going to be the best tennis player in the world.'

Double Olympic champion Bob Richards became the first spokesman for which breakfast cereal?

Wheaties. General Mills hired him when it steered the 'Breakfast of Champions' back to sport after a spell of selling to children, and it set up a Wheaties Sports Federation to promote fitness.

At the 1972 Munich Olympics, champion Bob Seagren lost gold after a late ruling barred what?

A new type of pole. The Cata-Pole was banned, cleared and banned again within days of the final; made to use an unfamiliar pole, Seagren took silver and afterwards handed it back to an IAAF official in disgust.

Which country's vaulters won every Olympic men's pole vault title from 1896 to 1968?

United States. The run of 16 golds ended in 1972, when East Germany's Wolfgang Nordwig beat the defending champion; only the unofficial 1906 Games, won by a Frenchman, had interrupted it.

Olympic champion Bob Seagren won the first edition of which televised multi-sport contest in 1973?

Superstars. Seagren beat stars from other sports, won the first world edition four years later and then turned actor, playing the boyfriend of Billy Crystal's character in the sitcom Soap.

Steve Hooker's 2008 pole vault gold was the first Olympic athletics title in 40 years for men from which country?

Australia. The last had been Ralph Doubell in the 800 m in 1968; Hooker did it the hard way, clearing each of his last four heights on his third and final attempt.

How did the home crowd treat Renaud Lavillenie as Brazil's Thiago Braz beat him in 2016?

Booed him. The jeers followed him on to the podium, where he was in tears, and the IOC president called it shocking; Braz had won with an Olympic record 6.03 m, ten centimetres above his best.

Jenn Suhr and Yarisley Silva both cleared 4.75 m at the 2012 Olympics, so what decided the gold?

Fewer misses. Both failed at 4.80 m, so the gold turned on the count of earlier failures, and Silva's miss at her opening height of 4.45 m left her with one more than Suhr.

Katie Moon shared the 2023 world title with which Australian rather than face a jump-off?

Nina Kennedy. Both cleared 4.90 m and failed three times at 4.95 m before she asked Moon, 'you maybe wanna share this?'; a year later Kennedy beat her friend to the Olympic title outright.

Why did Sam Kendricks stop mid-run-up at the 2016 Olympics?

The national anthem. A reserve officer in the US Army, he dropped his pole mid-run in qualifying when 'The Star-Spangled Banner' struck up in the stadium, and went on to win bronze.

'Volzing', now illegal, describes what act during a vault?

Pushing the bar back onto its pegs. American Dave Volz made a habit of steadying a wobbling bar with his hand in mid-air, and the rule-makers answered by making any such touch a failed attempt.

What is the ruling if a vaulter's pole breaks mid-attempt?

A non-jump, neither make nor miss. A snapped pole is treated as equipment failure rather than a foul, so the vaulter is simply awarded the attempt again.

As rivals drop out of a pole vault final, what happens to the time allowed for each attempt?

It gets longer. World Athletics allows one minute while more than three vaulters remain, two for the last two or three and five for a lone survivor; overrun the clock and the attempt counts as a miss.

Why does an elite vaulter bring ten or more poles to a competition?

Each differs in stiffness. Vaulters start on softer poles at the early heights and work up to the stiffest in the bag for the biggest jumps; one Olympic champion says she travels with twelve.

In pole vaulting, what is the 'box'?

The sunken slot where the pole is planted. Its floor slopes down to a stop board 20 cm deep, and jamming the pole tip against that board at full sprint is what turns a run-up into a vault.

Unlike most athletics world records, Renaud Lavillenie's 6.16 m in 2014 was set in what conditions?

Indoors. Since a rule change in 2000 a world record may be set 'with or without roof', which suits vaulters: Bubka's own best, 6.15 m, also came indoors, a centimetre above his outdoor record.

Fierljeppen, a traditional Dutch sport, uses a long pole to do what?

Leap across a canal onto a sand bed. Jumpers sprint at a pole standing in the water, grab it and climb towards the top as it tips over; the Dutch had crossed their waterways this way long before the first official match in 1771.

Which Olympic multi-event contest includes the pole vault?

Decathlon. The vault is the eighth of its ten events, and missing every attempt scores nothing: gold-medal favourite Dan O'Brien failed to make the 1992 Olympics after doing just that at the US trials.

Alfred Gilbert, joint Olympic pole vault champion in 1908, later made his fortune with which construction toy?

Erector Set. Gilbert shared the 1908 gold with Ed Cook, the only tie for first in the event's Olympic history, then built a toy empire, though he also held a Yale medical degree he never used.

Where did Armand Duplantis first learn to pole vault?

His family's backyard. His father, a vaulter himself, had built a pit there to train on; Mondo started at four, and in the 2020 lockdown he tied for first in a live-streamed contest from the same runway.

Armand Duplantis beat which fellow world record holder in an exhibition 100 m in Zürich in 2024?

Karsten Warholm. Duplantis ran 10.37 seconds to the 400 m hurdles record holder's 10.47, personal bests that would have taken both men through the preliminary round of that summer's Olympic 100 m.

Once a pole vaulter has left the ground, which move on the pole is against the rules?

Climbing it hand over hand. After take-off the upper hand may not move higher on the pole; in the event's early days vaulters on long, heavy poles climbed more than they jumped, until the method was outlawed.

Don Bragg, the 1960 Olympic pole vault champion, dreamed of playing which hero on screen?

Tarzan. Bragg, nicknamed after the character, greeted his victories with a Tarzan yell and was cast in a Tarzan film after the Games, but legal problems stopped the shoot and it was never released.

What were the earliest competitive vaulting poles made from?

Solid ash. The earliest poles, of ash or hickory, were tipped with iron spikes and so heavy that vaulters abandoned them as soon as a lighter material came along.

Before each attempt, a pole vaulter may ask officials to move the crossbar in which way?

Back towards the landing mat. The bar can sit anywhere from above the back of the box to 80 cm beyond it, a choice high jumpers never get, and the attempt clock starts only once it is where the vaulter asked.

Sergey Bubka's son, also named Sergei, became a professional in which sport?

Tennis. Sergei junior reached the world's top 200, though as one 2012 profile put it he had spent his whole life being called 'the great pole vaulter's son'.

What held up the 2008 Olympic women's pole vault final for over ten minutes?

A missing pole. Brazil's Fabiana Murer could not find the pole she wanted, and the final stopped while she hunted for it; she finished tenth and blamed the organisers.