The pole-vault may, perhaps, be appropriately included among the jumping events, although it has nothing in common with the other jumps except that it involves the clearing of a bar. It is one of the most picturesque of all track sports, and invariably excites the awe and astonishment of the gentler portion of the gallery. And it is, indeed, not without its dangers ; there is always the possibility of a fall, and if the pole breaks, as occasionally happens, the athlete entertains the agreeable prospect of being impaled on the splin tered end. On the other hand, it is a game which requires more of deftness and knack than of strength, and even a comparative duffer can make a jump which seems to the casual eye a good one. Delvers in athletic archxology have advanced the opinion that the pole-vault is the outgrowth of the purely utilitarian aid to locomo tion employed by the natives of Cambridgeshire in England to vault over the network of drains that cross the great Bedford Level — which may be true, although it is quite as likely that the sport had no such specific and localized source. However this may be, it seems to have attained as legitimate a place in field athletics as any of the less "fancy" events.
In the pole-vault a man of height is at a dis tinct advantage. His natural grip on the pole is at a greater height than the shorter man's, and he approaches the bar, therefore, at a handier angle, and provided he has the strength and cleverness he ought to be able to lift himself over the bar with correspondingly greater ease. This was par ticularly true of the old method of pole-vault ing, where the hands kept their position on the pole in contrast with the English style of climb ing the pole, hand over hand, while in the air. Nowadays the best American pole-vaulters slip the lower hand up after the pole has been thrust into the ground, so that both hands are together on the pole at a distance slightly above the point where the pole would touch the bar, and the arms are in a natural position for a strong upward pull. Two marks, one about fifty and one about one hundred feet from the take-off, are used, as in the broad jump, and in approaching the bar the vaulter attains —as nearly as he can, encumbered by the pole — top speed. The body turns as the
vaulter clears the bar, and he lands, as from the high jump, facing the direction from which he left the ground. The first vaulter in this country to attain anything like our present championship form was H. H. Baxter of the New York Athletic Club. Baxter was nearly six feet two, weighed one hundred fifty pounds, and he cleared 11 feet 5 inches. During the middle eighties he was champion for four consecutive years. None of the American club athletes of that time sur passed Baxter's records, although E. L. Stone, the Englishman, who visited this country in 1889 and won the national championship in that year, had an English record of xi feet 7 inches. The pole-vault has always been rather favored by un dergraduates, on account, doubtless, of its novelty and picturesqueness and the comparative ease with which almost anybody can learn the knack of lifting himself a respectable distance into the air. Of late years it has been the college athletes who have set the pace in this event and made the records. With the exception of 1901, which hap pened to be an off-year for college pole-vaulters, it has required since 1894 a vault of over I I feet to win the event at Mott Haven, and, indeed, a man who can't clear very close to that height is no longer considered more than a duffer at the game. Buchholz of Pennsylvania, McLanahan, Allis, Johnson, and Clapp of Yale, Hoyt of Harvard, Horton of Princeton, and Gardner of Syracuse, all have won at these airy figures within recent years at Mott Haven. Horton in 1902 and Gardner in 1903 each cleared I I feet 7 inches, which stood as the collegiate and inter collegiate record until the 1904 record of I I feet 74 inches made by McLanahan of Yale, Gring of Harvard, and Gardner. R. S. Clapp of Yale, although never able to equal these figures while competing in college games, cleared the bar at Chicago in 1898 at I i feet Io2 inches, and McLanahan at the Yale-Princeton dual meet in 1904 established a world's record of feet I- inch. The best English record is the II feet 9 inches made by R. D. Dickinson of Windmere, at Kid derminster, in 1891.