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ok, so there are no other sports other than PVing. thats it, across the world. what do you think the WR would be. I think a world class vaulter would be at 20'. the WR would be near 22'. Crazy , i dont THINK so?

ok, what athlete in another sport do you see as jumping that high?

or maybe it is track, put a pole in carl lewis's hands on the way to one of his many 28' long jumps, does he clear the bar.


Which athlete clears 22? Michael "Air" Jordan??? i would have love to see him pole vault, probably only had modest sprinting speed, but he was tall and strong and could JUMP! also great coordination in the air.

this thread is no fun unless you actually speculate over which athlete would supplant bubka. even with the whole world trying, bubka would still be much better than just world class i would like to think.

Skyin' Brian wrote:ok, what athlete in another sport do you see as jumping that high?

or maybe it is track, put a pole in carl lewis's hands on the way to one of his many 28' long jumps, does he clear the bar.


Which athlete clears 22? Michael "Air" Jordan??? i would have love to see him pole vault, probably only had modest sprinting speed, but he was tall and strong and could JUMP! also great coordination in the air.

this thread is no fun unless you actually speculate over which athlete would supplant bubka. even with the whole world trying, bubka would still be much better than just world class i would like to think.

how about Michael Johnson Asafa Powell Jeremy Wariner allen iverson? all about 6' and fast as heck. many of the top 400m guys would make great PVs. but my question is "if there was NOTHING but pving. i bet there at least 20 guys in the nfl who if they were trained from an early age (and that was all they did) could jump 6m. nba, nfl , pro soccer...fast tall guys. think of all the great athletes over the world who are just crazy good at what they do. anyway , 5 BILLION people and the ONLY sport is PVing? 22'!

It would be at 28 ft if chuck norris vaulted instead of fighting

Kolber wrote:It would be at 28 ft if chuck norris vaulted instead of fighting

bet he could get 17' in his prime. 22' is what i say would be the WR.

superman...30ft...we hope

pole bender wrote:

Kolber wrote:It would be at 28 ft if chuck norris vaulted instead of fighting

bet he could get 17' in his prime. 22' is what i say would be the WR.

Wow... I think that was a joke...


Anyways--more seriously. One thing that people might want to consider is also how the Soviet's trained back then, and continue to train today. They work on the general athletic training a lot. All of their world class athletes are just stud athletes in general. I have read in various texts about their vball team playing an entire 80min socceer game, (with a 10min half which consisted of plyos and lunges and stuff..) and then playing the US about 3-4 hours afterwards, and the Soviets still won 3 games to none.

My point is, if PV was the ONLY sport, I think Bubka himself would have gone higher because A--he would have had specialized training right from the start, and B--he might have had more competition, so he was unable to jump the WR and be done, maybe he would have been forced to 6.20, 6.25 rather than just 6.15. Would have been the best, I don't know, but he himself was a rediculous athlete.

And yes, the NFL could make some sick PV. D-Backs like Deion Sanders.. sick speed (like 4.20-4.22 fully automated) and like a 40"+ standing vert... I don't know the exact numbers but..

I've thought about this before... consider this excerpt on how the pole vault works from www.howstuffworks.com :

Let's say our pole vaulter can run as fast as anyone in the world. Right now, the world record for running 100 m is just under 10 seconds. That gives a velocity of 10 m/s. We also know that the acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 m/s2. So now we can solve for the height:

1/2 x (102 / 9.8) = 5.1 m

So 5.1 meters is the height that a pole vaulter could raise his center of mass if he converted all of his KE into PE. But his center of mass is not on the ground; it is in the middle of his body, about 3 ft (1 m) off the ground. So the best height a pole vaulter could achieve is in fact about 20 ft (6.1 m). He may be able to gain a little more height by using special techniques, like pushing off from the top of the pole, or getting a really good jump before takeoff.

What this tells us is that Bubka's world record is already in the ballpark of what is humanly possible. The analysis here is even optimistic because it ignores the fact that a perfect conversion from kinetic energy from your run to height is impossible (think of the impact of the pole in the back of the box, for example), and I doubt there are many people out there who are able to be master technicians and run 10 seconds in the 100m, even if everyone was trying it.

So... I'm gonna have to say that the world record isn't going to get all that much higher any time soon-- certainly not 22'.

tak wrote:I've thought about this before... consider this excerpt on how the pole vault works from www.howstuffworks.com :

Let's say our pole vaulter can run as fast as anyone in the world. Right now, the world record for running 100 m is just under 10 seconds. That gives a velocity of 10 m/s. We also know that the acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 m/s2. So now we can solve for the height:

1/2 x (102 / 9.8) = 5.1 m

So 5.1 meters is the height that a pole vaulter could raise his center of mass if he converted all of his KE into PE. But his center of mass is not on the ground; it is in the middle of his body, about 3 ft (1 m) off the ground. So the best height a pole vaulter could achieve is in fact about 20 ft (6.1 m). He may be able to gain a little more height by using special techniques, like pushing off from the top of the pole, or getting a really good jump before takeoff.

What this tells us is that Bubka's world record is already in the ballpark of what is humanly possible. The analysis here is even optimistic because it ignores the fact that a perfect conversion from kinetic energy from your run to height is impossible (think of the impact of the pole in the back of the box, for example), and I doubt there are many people out there who are able to be master technicians and run 10 seconds in the 100m, even if everyone was trying it.

So... I'm gonna have to say that the world record isn't going to get all that much higher any time soon-- certainly not 22'.

...OK, so what you're using is Conservation of energy. A good idea, however, there are some gray areas associated with that.

First off, all that is saying is that if we were to take off the ground, it would raise our center of mass 5.1m. With doing nothing after leaving the ground, if all the energy was to be returned (which it's not, energy is lost in sound and strain energy is lost in the pole bending) a jumper with that speed could potentially jump that. My main question with that (and being a physics major, I have deliberated over this one a lot...) is those relationships do not have anything to do with the pole. It is simply comparing the potential energy with the kinetic energy. Technically, this means that if you were to fall from the 5.1m, just before landing you would be traveling just over 10 m/s.

So then we would need to look into how we convert the horizontal velocity into vertical velocity. The fast one moves, by laws of inertia, it gets harder to change ones path (this is why even though a long jumper tries to jump up, it doesn't happen very well).

Bottom line, in my opinion, is that it's a good starting point, but there are too many other things that happen in the vault to simply compare potentail and kinetic energy values. Much higher than 20' right now, I don't see it, but if it were all we every worked on as a human race, it would be a totally different event.

...I'll get off my soap box now, and I'll stay off... I swear...

So with this question applying to the women's vault...what would the record be? Do you believe that it could be broken considering how high it is now compared to the rest of the vaulters in the world?

Any improvement in the world record would be overshadowed by having to listen to Joe Theismann talk about pole vaulting. He does a bad enough job with football.

RidinHigh wrote:So with this question applying to the women's vault...what would the record be? Do you believe that it could be broken considering how high it is now compared to the rest of the vaulters in the world?

17'..... no doubt. (look at some of the other female WRs , flo jo 10.49). how about marion jones as a PVer?