PoleVaultPower.com

perhaps the historians and old vaulters who read this board can help me. i have read that don bragg was the world record-holder on steel poles. was it really steel? if so, it had to be a soft grade, no? or were aluminum or some other metals used? what was the usual material for vaulting poles between bamboo and fiberglass?

I beieve aluminum was the big thing... I had an aluminum Gill back in HS... in JR High I had a tapered swedish steel...don't ask me what it's composition was... what ever sweedis steel was... it was heavier than aluminum....... any flexibility you got was cause you were fast and had shoulders of superman..... any sort of bend you got was nothing to wrte home about, more like a quiver of a couple of inches.....

Bragg used the Swedish Poles. What ever possessed anyone to consider the Sweds capable of developing an alloy specific to pole vaulting I'll never know. mine was a cream colored pole with a light blue color about 18 inches long in the middle of the pole. Boxes were made of steel and the sides were straight up not slanted as they are now. The ends were tapered to a fairly small diameter. The plant was completely different back then. When planting the pole you slide the pole through your left hand until both hands were just a few inches apart or together. The hands were stuck up as high as possible and you rolled up off your take off foot. Still with knee seperation as today, but the swing was a true swing through the hands and not the shoulder girdle!

Aluminum poles were a larger diameter and generally used by high schoolers. They were lighter but could not sustain the higher grips as well as the tapered steel poles. As I remember....which is becoming harder and harder to do!

Good to hear from you ladyvolspvcoach. It's been a while since we've had a dialogue. Thanks for the report on pole materials. My memory has all but disappeared about back then. I do remember at the very beginning being on about a 9' long swedish steel pole that was only slightly bigger around than a broomstick. Then I moved up to an aluminum pole. In my 2nd or 3rd year of HS vaulting we got a Browning Silaflex fiberglass pole. As I recall, we went through a couple of those my senior year. Wouldn't it be fun to have some video/film of what our jumping looked like back then?

- master

It would be fun to have some video from back then! Trouble is I think you had to wind the camera with your hand back then!

i do remember them taking photos for newspapers with 4x5 Black and white film.......

Was the flash a pile of white powder on a platform that ignited when the picture was taken

yep. you had to time it just right!!!!! like some of the photo ops today:)