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This is my first post.I'M the "paw paw" of the vaulting Duplantis clan. I thought i would start a progress report on the clan . Andreas 14'6" PR 15 Years Old
Antoine 9'6" PR 12 Years Old (only 1 meet)
Armand "Mondo" 9'6" 8 Years Old
Johanna 4'6" as a 5 Year Old (back yard vault)
to see Mondo's latest world age records go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xm8z8pa-pm

Talk about a family tradition....

It says the video is unavailable?

duppawpaw wrote:I'M the "paw paw" of the vaulting Duplantis clan. I thought i would start a progress report on the clan. ...

Greg, congratulations on getting all your kids into pole vaulting! Do you have any more, or is Johanna the youngest?

You probably already know this, but I'm going to emphasize it, just in case ...

Even for clearances in your back yard, try to document any PRs as well as you can, with the best measuring and verification system that you can. It may be impractical to have a non-family member come in and "judge" your family "competitions", but just be systematic about doing this yourself, with "official" score sheets. Date and sign all score sheets. Have any other adult witnesses sign them too. Keep a record of every "meet" (or even every "practice" where a PR is set) for each of your kids.

Stick to the real PV rules. If anyone misses thrice in a row, their meet is over for the day, but if they want to keep vaulting, I see nothing wrong with starting a new "meet", as long as you record that fact on the score sheet(s). Even tho this might sound picky today, it might become important in future years.

The reason I emphasize this is that Mondo is already vaulting his age, and it looks like Johanna and Andreas are getting close. Jumping your age is a big deal to a lot of track nuts and statisticians.

There's claims that Casey Carrigan vaulted his age for a lot of years before he did 17' at age 17. However, these are just anecdotal claims, without any proof - dubious at best.

It might seem unimportant now, but who knows ... 20-30-40 years from now, your family might hold many WRs.

And if there's a WR for the sum of the PRs of all siblings, your family might get close to the WR in the next decade or so!

One more thing ... Take all measurements in centimetres, then convert them back to imperial feet/inches if you must. It's the metric measurements that are "official" and will stand the test of time over the next several decades.

It would also be interesting to document their height, weight, grip, and 100m speed at least once per year, or maybe when they hit a PR.

Yeh, I know it sounds silly to record the 100m speed of your 5-year-old, but the idea is for them to see their own progressions from year to year. OK, so maybe the 100m is overkill for Johanna. But not her height, weight, or grip.

Kirk

First,i'm Bob,Greg's dad .I'm working on why you can't go directly to the latest video,but if you use the url in utube search it should get you there. i'm a real numbers buff so you'll see more stats in the future than you can stand. so far mondo has gone 10'0" in the backyard,twanie 10'1". more to come as time permits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xm8z8pa-PM

maybe the last pm has to be PM

duppawpaw wrote:First,i'm Bob,Greg's dad .I'm working on why you can't go directly to the latest video,but if you use the url in utube search it should get you there. i'm a real numbers buff so you'll see more stats in the future than you can stand. so far mondo has gone 10'0" in the backyard,twanie 10'1". more to come as time permits.

Bob, sorry thinking your were Greg. Papa can mean dad or grandad in my culture. But Duplantis is Greek, no doubt, so I guess in that culture, it means grandad. My bad.

You must be very proud of Greg and his kids! I certainly would be if I was in your shoes.

So "twanie" must be Antoine's nickname. I'm catching on now, right?

It would be helpful if you could provide their birthdates, so that we can check their clearances against their ages (for jumping their ages).

And when I was talking about WRs, I didn't just mean in the official, IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) sense. I was also alluding to the Guiness Book of World Records.

I don't know anything about Greg's wife, but if she's at all athletic, I'll bet that "the clan" can almost immediately get in the book. All she needs to do is vault maybe 5 feet (can't have the 5-year-old daughter beating the wife, can we?), and then they might very well be the largest family to all be pole vaulters. Then add up all their PRs, and that's the record to claim. With Greg's 19', and the boys progressing rapidly, that record will grow quite quickly, and will be very hard for any other family to beat. After all, how many other families can there be in the world, where there's 7 pole vaulters?

Kirk

kirk,a little bit more info,duplantis is french. i was corrected by mondo a few minutes ago...johanna has already vaulted 5' in the backyard. Greg's wife Helena,came to the US from Sweden to LSU on a track scholarship as a heptathlete.

Bob, I'm very, very sorry to jumping to conclusions on who you were or what ancestry your clan had. I won't make any more assumptions, as I'm 0 for 2 so far.

It's interesting that Greg's wife Helena was a heptathlete! I realize that doen'st include PV, but she sounds athletic enough to better her 5-year-old daughters PR, so I look forward to some day reading about the Duplantis family of FRENCH heritage with GRAND-paw-paw Bob, setting a WR for most family members competing in a PV event in the same year (or day? or maybe just "all-time"?), for a total of "umpteen meters"!!!

Do you think they already have this record, or are you aware of any other similar families.

I know there's been a lot of discussion on this forum and the T&F News forum about brother/sister PV teams, and father/son teams, but I"m not aware of any mulit-sibling or total family team records even being discussed.

I suppose this is the start of that discussion.

Let's add up the total meters for the Duplantis family, and ask if there's any other families that anyone's aware of - world-wide - that come close to or beat their total.

And maybe we should/could include "paw-paws" in this competition? What's your PR, Bob?

Anyone?

Kirk

Kirk,no need to be sorry. cajuns are not very sensitive .i'm of course interested in the exploits of my cajun-vikings. Although Helena had successful college accomplishments (heptahlete and vollyball at LSU) see has no pv pr, nor I.

One more thing .Helena's father was a 3.80 vaulter in sweden in his youth,he's 70+ now.

Does there happen to be any height on the mothers side of the family? I think in the advanced technique thread about gregs video it was stated many times that if a taller vaulter had been able to vault like him then there would be no telling how good they could be.

I have no idea what this means but greg's mother's father was UKRAINIAN.