Scouting, Volume 60, Number 1, January-February 1972 Page: 32
68, [20] p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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MIXED GRILL
WORLD'S GOOFIEST SPORT
Bv BOB DEINDORFER
32
I ate one November afternoon, year
y before last, a muscular, dark-
haired bloke, name of Christos Papa-
nicolaou wrapped his thick hands
around a slender fiber glass pole and
paused at the end of a narrow runway
in Athens, Greece. He pulled in a few
deep breaths, raised the tip of the pole
and went into what was by then an
old routine.
Papanicolaou whirled up the run-
way, his head high, his big thighs
pumping, moving faster and faster un-
til he approached the barrier. Quickly,
using a familiar reflex, he socked the
end of the pole into a small wooden
trough. He swung up, up, up on the
rising pole, kicked his feet far over his
head, wriggled across a crossbar 18
feet '4 inch high. He landed gently in
a soft bed of sawdust.
More than 20,000 rubbernecks seated
there in the outdoor arena stomped,
whistled and made other appropriate
animal noises by way of appreciation.
Despite the restrictive laws of gravity
and human agility, Papanicolaou—the
Greeks sure do have a word for it—
had come up with another one of
sports' most implausible spectacles,
the 18-foot pole vault. As such, it
amounted to a breathless moment for
everyone who saw it.
Well, almost everyone.
A big, beefy American sitting at the
far end of the arena shrugged his
shoulders. The performance impressed
him not at all: "All right, so he went
18 feet in the air with the help of that
crutch. What good is it?"
Whether the visitor realized it or
not, he had come close to putting his
finger on an outlandish truth. What
good is it, anyway? At one time or
another most popular track exercises
—sprints, distance races, hurdles,
javelin throw—all had at least some
basis in utility, but the pole vault
never had any practical value other
than second-story work and, inciden-
tally, for doctors who put splints on
all those compound fractures.
Even so, of all the many events in
track and field, none has greater
crowd appeal than the worthless pole
vault. Now that the indoor track sea-
son has begun here in America, fans
will be developing a stiff neck watch-
ing the sky climbers until the last
vault at the Olympic games in Munich
this summer.
What's more, Americans seem to be
especially adept at this zany pastime.
America has won all but one Olympic
vaulting title, for example, and 44 of
history's highest vaulters have been
weaned on domestic breakfast food.
Even current champion Papanicolaou
learned the technique as a student at
San Jose State in California.
Despite its goofy nature, truly strat-
ospheric jumping demands the most
precise set of skills in all athletics.
"Take it from me, nothing is tougher
or more complicated than vaulting,"
Coach Jim Elliot of powerhouse Villa-
nova told me recently.
Maybe so. But to average specta-
tors, the pole vault looks like nothing
more than a sequence of sprint, giant
swing, handstand at the top of the
pole and that colossal pratfall into the
sawdust.
To authentic virtuosos, the vault is
an art form every bit as esoteric as
finger-painting on the Boclalla Walls.
Within the space of one and two-tenths
seconds a vaulter actually goes
through 35 different body-twisting mo-
tions. Sometimes he must alter his
timing by not more than point-oh-five
of a second.
Improvement comes slowly through
long years of dedicated practice. The
outstanding recent vaulters—Bob Sea-
gren, John Pennel, Robert Richards
—spent 6, 8 or even 10 years learning
their intricate trade. Cornelius Warm-
erdam, for example, first crashed the
15-foot barrier some years ago at the
ripe old age of 25.
Even the bizarre training routine
vaulters generally follow conflicts
with the standard athletic procedure.
Unlike other competitors, who almost
always practice exactly what they will
be doing in actual competition, the
great pole vaulters seldom, if ever,
jump at all during workouts. Instead,
they run short sprints, lift weights,
walk on their hands and do other light
gymnastic drills.
Nobody, not even the champs them-
selves, can ever predict how high they
might jump in a particular meet. They
know better. After all, only 5 weeks
before he first cleared 17 feet, Seagren
was eliminated in another meet when
he missed a vault at 15 feet 6 inches.
His timing had blurred some.
Now that the 18-foot barrier has
finally been breached, the cranks who
ride fiber glass poles have begun
shooting for a 19-footer. But not me,
not me. A tall 19 feet up is also a long
19 feet down, which is reason enough
to take a seat right next to me in the
stands.
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 60, Number 1, January-February 1972, periodical, January 1972; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353658/m1/40/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.