Ultimate Crash Stories?

[fong520]

wouldnt u like to read it more if they did that though??.. mayb grownups r diff but if someone said not to do this or i cant see that.. well.. hehe.

[NUVAULTER]

I didnt mean to scare or deter anyone form polevaulting it is a very safe sport when done correctly and like Becca said your pole is your freind never let go

[blazerunner121]

You guys really should give a rating to these threads just like they do to movies....for example, a rating of NPVM for No Pole Vault Moms. My daughter is a beginning vaulter and I should not be reading this!

most of these things won't happen if a vaulter takes simple, realistic measures on safely vaulting.

[theflyingkorean]

i just busted two of my teeth off on thursday. let me tell you how unfun it is. the three denstist who run different clinics...NONE of them are back from vacation until monday. no food or anything because it is so sensitive with the root exposed and whatnot. boo.

[tim hutzley]

my coach did that last year. we were putting the bar up at like 8 feet I think for this girl, it was really windy and the bar fell off and hit him in the face. I thought it was funny but he is also a teacher at my school so he didnt come in until he got it fixed because everyone would have made fun of him.

[superchau88]

last year during an early saturday morning practice i decided jump up to a big pole right away without warming up on smaller poles. the pole ended up shooting me straight at the left standard and i bear hugged the standard and just held on. i only got a few scratches from the pins but the look on the freshmen girls' faces was priceless.

one day during pre season last year i decided to play around with handgrips a bit and at one point or another i ended up narrowing my grip by a lot. the whole time i was going down the runway i was thinking about how odd it felt so i ended up planting late and i didn't even plant into the box, the tip of the pole ended up in between the pads but i still jumped up and i went towards the left. on the very same day my friend zach just happened to be sleeping on the left side of the pads, he looked up just in time to see me coming at him spikes first. he immedietly rolled off the pads and onto the dirt and i landed butt first right next to him. i got a sore butt for the rest of the day because i landed on the concrete space where the standards should have been.

freshman year i just learned to bend on a small 12' 120 but i had a habit of just running as fast as i can and just do nothing after the pole bent. well, one day i didn't even jump off the ground and the bent pole flung me back towards a fence. i just got a bunch of rust stains on my shirt from the old fence but everyone else was impressed the pole didn't snap because it bent about 200º.

last year during a really hot day i didn't feel like jumping. so i grabbed some pole tubes and decided to vault with those. one of them snapped too soon and i fell straight down on the box. i was happy i wasn't very high up.

[ritz]

my first practice on a new pole i went up and it snapped forward really fast, so I let go of the pole with both hands and flipped in the air and landed upside down with my head on the mat right before the box. I almost landed with my head in the box, it was pretty scary.

[vaulter870]

only one thing to say to that ritz DON'T LET GO OF THE POLE

[Azbeachboy1]

If you wanna know anything about breaking poles just ask Chris Chappel! He's a pro!

[ladyvolspvcoach]

I was about 900 feet high. I had just taken the lead in the time aloft segment of the fly-in, and had just completed crosswind segment of the three pilon course and steup for the downwind leg. Sticking the downwind leg I head back to the slope of the mountain to get more air time and extend the lead in the time aloft segment. I was flying a Seagull III made in Santa Monica. A really slow glider with great handling characteristics. Not great penetration and glide angle but really slow decent. Great for the lighter winds in the mountains of East Tennessee. The last task in the meet was to land in an innertube (or.... the target). I'm down to about 100 feet and flying over the target to get ready to set up for the last turn and crab in for the kill. I gage my distance from the target and start to crank a turn to set up for the final approach. Half way through the turn the wind shifts and I get smacked with a tail wind (good on the runway, way bad in the air). I crank the turn radically into a wingover the get through it. The glider drops too fast and I catch the wing tip on the ground just before I can get out of the turn. The wing tip stops and the glider slams me into the ground. There's a big cloud of dust and my helmet comes rolling out from under the wing. I thought I was dead. The impact caused blood to come through the pores on my face. My nose is still a little loose on my face. I was about 15 feet above the ground when the wing tip hit. Kinda like standing on the roof of a house and putting you hands in your back pocket and diving into the ground. My best "crash" story

[Peepers PV]

i think you win

[UNCW Vaulter]

I didnt mean to scare or deter anyone form polevaulting it is a very safe sport when done correctly

Even when done correctly, this is a very dangerous sport. There are just too many factors that go into every vault. Even with good training/coaching/supervision, the best you can hope for is to minimize the risks involved.

The worst crash I was ever involved in... at the Duke Invitational, I ricocheted off the standard and landed in lane 2. I wasn't knocked unconcious or anything, but I was so shaken up I didn't realize that I was blocking the track for a distance race that was in process. I only narrowly avoided being stampeded by a herd of gazelle!