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Bellah''s career went up, up and over the top


By Jeff FaraudoSTAFF WRITER






THE 1908 OLYMPICS pole vault competition in London was notable for several reasons, not the least of which is that it featured Stanford''s first Olympian, Sam Bellah. Bellah, who also participated in the long jump and javelin throw at London, finished in a tie for sixth in the vault. That hardly tells the story of the pole vault competition at the fourth modern Games. First of all, world recordholder Walter Dray of the United States did not enter the meet. Why? Apparently his mother was afraid he might be injured. Hard to imagine, for instance, women''s vault star Stacy Dragila being saddled with a similar restriction. Then, the 1908 competition was disrupted by the furor surrounding the bizarre finish of the marathon, in which Italian runner Dorando Pietri staggered into the stadium, collapsed onto the track, then was helped across the finish line by sympathetic British   officials. Pietri subsequently was disqualified. In the meantime, Bellah, a native of Hanford in the Central Valley, cleared 11 feet, 6 inches to tie for sixth place. The gold medal was shared by two Americans, Edward Cooke and Alfred "A.C." Gilbert, each clearing an Olympic record 12-2. Gilbert, who worked his way through Yale as a magician, became far more famous years later as the inventor of the popular toy, the Erector Set. Bellah was just hitting his stride. On May 17, 1912, just before his 25th birthday, the 5-foot-9, 155-pounder set an Olympic Trials record of 12-95/8 in competition at Stanford. His record didn''t last long. At the Eastern Olympic Trials at Harvard, just 22 days later, Marcus Wright scaled 13-21/4 to set a world record. Bellah went on to finish seventh at the Stockholm Games with a clearance of 12-31/2, a mark that would have won   the gold medal four years earlier. Bellah also may have set a world indoor record of 13-0 in 1912. But records are sketchy, and the IAAF, which governs the sport worldwide, did not ratify indoor records until the past three decades. Bellah spent the bulk of his adult life in Oregon, beginning around 1915, when he won his second national AAU crown while representing the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland. For nearly 20 years he   operated a ranch in Central Point, just north of Medford, where he died at age 75 in 1963.

rainbowgirl28 wrote:First of all, world recordholder Walter Dray of the United States did not enter the meet. Why? Apparently his mother was afraid he might be injured. Hard to imagine, for instance, women''s vault star Stacy Dragila being saddled with a similar restriction.

That's not hard for me to imagine, considering what they landed on at that time

I believe at that time they were still using wooden poles-- which when they break they make a spear that a Zulu would love. I know that some people were killed during this era by being impaled on the pole.

Medals from that period.

Here's a really neat article, there's a picture if you click on the link...

http://www.pacificu.edu/news_events/mag ... =16&page=2

The inventive medalist

Before he was known as an inventor and toymaker extraordinaire, A.C. Gilbert, class of 1909, made his fame as an athlete, and became the first Boxer to realize Olympic glory. A naturally talented athlete from a young age, Gilbert arrived at Tualatin Academy in 1900. He was allowed to compete with the University athletic teams despite being only 16. By the time he transitioned from the Academy to the University, he was a star at Pacific not only in track and field, where he specialized in the pole vault, but in boxing, wrestling, gymnastics, and football. A 1904 article in The Oregonian proclaimed Gilbert "the best quarterback to be found in Oregon."

Gilbert won a string of wrestling trophies for Pacific and went on to lead the University to the 1904 Oregon state collegiate track championship, defeating teams from both the University of Oregon and Oregon State University. He transferred to Yale in 1904 to pursue a medical degree, which he felt would help him become a better coach. He continued to excel in athletics and in 1906 became only the fourth athlete to earn his "Y" in two sports.

It was the inventive nature of his future fame, however, that nearly kept Gilbert from striking gold. Until that time, athletes vaulted with a rigid hickory pole with a six-inch metal spike that stuck into the ground. But when Gilbert took up the pole vault in Lewiston, Idaho, in the 1890s, there were no poles to be found. His first pole came from a split rail that he "appropriated" from a farmer's fence. "Since I didn't have a metal spike at the end of my pole, as they all did in those days, I dug a little hole in the ground at the base of the standards to slip my pole into," Gilbert said in his biography, The Man Who Lives In Paradise. "I don't think I had seen that done or even read about it, but it was the only thing for me under the circumstances."

The flexible pole proved a record-smashing success. Gilbert set the world record in 1906, using a spikeless bamboo pole to vault 12 feet, 3 inches. In the 1908 Olympic trials, Gilbert set another world record of 12 feet, 7 inches, to earn a trip to the London Games. British Olympic officials, who had a perceived disdain of American athletic training, were not impressed with Gilbert's innovations. During the preliminaries, officials saw him using the spikeless pole and ruled it illegal, despite no official prohibitions against it. The next day, Gilbert was removed from the field and nearly banned from the competition after he was caught attempting to dig a small hole for his pole.

He was allowed to return, and went on to post the best mark of the finals at 12 feet, 2 inches using the spiked pole. It was another officials' decision, however, that soured the talented Gilbert on athletics. Despite having the best mark in the finals by an inch, the British ruled that Gilbert would share the medal with E.T. Cooke, another American. Cooke had vaulted the same height in the preliminaries, but had fallen badly in the finals.

Gilbert gave up on athletics upon his return to the U.S. After graduation, he started a business producing magic kits. The inventions that the A.C. Gilbert Company marketed, including the Erector Set and the American Flyer train line, went on to bring joy to millions of kids. He would work as a volunteer vaulting coach for Yale in future years, and in 1929 was named to the board of the America's track and field's governing body, the Amateur Athletic Union.

Ironically, Gilbert's pole and hole, which nearly cost him a medal, are standard equipment for the event today. Gilbert's bamboo pole has given way to even more flexible fiberglass poles. His hole in the ground became the forerunner to the modern vaulting box found in pole vault pits around the world.