PoleVaultPower.com

Over the past couple of years there have been a few posts implying that several - many? - US vaulters jumped 'like' Bubka, in the 1960s and 70s.

The only vaulters who I have seen who jumped 'like Bubka before Bubka' were folk like Warmerdam whose technique was conceptually the same, and Slusarski of Poland, the 1976 Olympic Champion, who demonstrated perhaps the most critical of the Petrov/Bubka characteristics - an unloaded pole at take off.

So I would really appreciate it if someone could post film of US vaulters - or anyone other than Slusarski - who jumped 'like' Bubka before 1980 - i.e. before Bubka!

Not americans, but these guys definately took off well and were around before Bubka.

Kjell Isaksson
Konstantin Volkov

Don't have any video to post, but I seem to remember Sweden's Kjell Isaksson (sp?), Germany's Wolfgang Nordwig, and USA's Dave Roberts all using a free takeoff in at least the videos I've seen of their jumps.

Roberts was a vaulter that Yuriy Volkov based a lot of his technique around. Volkov said this one year at the Summit back when he was living in El Paso.

Roberts said that the vault was a pure swing off the ground. He compared it to running, jumping and grabbing a tree branch and swinging to the top.

Alan, I am honestly suprised. I thought you knew your history better than that. What about Bob Richards and Charles Hoff?

Naughty Tim - I am surprised you are sniping at me on this - unless of course your comment was tongue in cheek. I did not want to list a great number of stiff pole vaulters because that would confuse some folk more than a little. Yes they were conceptually all the same - they had to be if they wanted to vault high on stiff poles - and all based their vault on taking off out and a long continuous swing from take off until they came off the pole. You will note that in Chapter 21 of BTB (where Richards is mentioned) I indicated that the best stiff pole vaulters - most notably Warmerdam (I found some drawings of him but not of Hoff etc) were an influence on Petrovs thoughts on technique. The equivalent chapter in BTB2 will do a better job - I hope.

However I hope all respondents will note that I did not merely ask for the names of athletes whom they believed to have jumped like Bubka before Bubka -but actual film of them because I have seen no film of most of the folk mentioned. However I have seen film of Volkov and on the basis of that film (1980 Games) I dont think he qualifies. Film of Slusarski in the same comp suggests that he does.

Of course it was tongue in cheek and, I think it helps make your point. When Bubka first showed up gripping 17' we could not believe what we were seeing, and had no explanation for it. It was obvious that something strange and new was going on, but, at least in Oklahoma, we had no idea what it was.