Yes Joe Dial was relatively short - but I am told by reputable sources that he was a 26' plus long jumper. These same sources told me that although you love to claim that you were only a 20' long jumper - they were also quite sure you were capable of jumping well over 24' if you had to.
Joe long jumped almost 25' in high school. So it isn't a stretch to think that he might have been able to go 26' in his prime. I certainly think so. As for my own abilities, I have had people tell me to my face that they thought I could go over 24’. The only evidence I have, which is my own experience, simply contradicts this. I have tried to long jump at the suggestions of my coaches at OU who wanted some extra points at conference. They gave up on me after a few practices; in none of those did I go over 21’. I also long jumped in a few small meets in Europe that did not have the pole vault on the schedule. Once again, I got beat out of sight.
As far as strength goes, my max bench press was 255. My max ½ squat was 405 which are not bad numbers, but by comparison, Joe could squat almost 600 and benched 320. I trained with some exceptional athletes, and I know how I stacked up against them. When I was at my best, I trained mostly alone, and I did that both through necessity and by design. Working out with other athletes caused me to doubt my ability to compete with them. I was by far the weakest at all the lifts and the slowest in all the sprints.
Another fact to take into account is that, as I have said a number of times, my competitive weight was under 140 pounds. Occasionally I got up to 143 or so, but at 150 I was too slow to be competitive. A person that small simply cannot have the raw power that a larger person possesses. It is not enough to have a high strength to body weight ratio to succeed in the pole vault. You have to find a way to penetrate on a big enough pole with a high enough hand grip to be competitive. This is much easier if you are a larger athlete. I am certain that there are other very small athletes who have done well in this sport, but I am also certain that the list of those at my weight is very short. I know I am not the smallest in stature, but I may be the lightest athlete to ever clear 5.65. When I did it in ’89 this was certainly true, but there may have been others since then; I don’t know.
In ’94, when I reached my physical peak, I cleared 5.70 from 7 lefts in practice before an injury crippled the remainder of my career. During that same span of years, Joe was capable of clearing more than 20’ but was breaking the American Record a centimeter at a time and so got trapped in the same circumstance that caused Bubka’s meet PR to be lower than his capabilities.
As far as speed goes, I did not measure it in my prime. I clocked 4.7 in a 40 yard sprint when I was 21, and I jumped 18’3â€Â
