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There are a lot more left-handed vaulters these days. When I vaulted in the sixties, there were very few. Gerald Pratt was the first left-handed vaulter to clear sixteen feet. He was also a "wrong-footer" (took off his left leg, like a right-handed vaulter). When I cleared 16'9" in 1966 it was a (me...

Greg Duplantis posted on the Track and Field News message board, "Historical" section:

http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/tfn/di ... thread=672

This just in from Greg Duplantis himself, posted on another forum. He had been asked just exactly how tall he was when he first made 19'. Here's his reply (in quotation marks): "It appears I am getting shorter as I get older. Literally. But, at the time I jumped 5.80 19-1/4 I was exactly 5'-6''. I h...

This just in from Greg Duplantis himself, posted on another forum. He had been asked just exactly how tall he was when he first made 19'. Here's his reply (in quotation marks): "It appears I am getting shorter as I get older. Literally. But, at the time I jumped 5.80 19-1/4 I was exactly 5'-6''. I h...

How tall was Duplantis actually? I've heard he was only 5'6", though I don't know if that's true.

That was a lot of great vaulting 22 years ago! Was Dial the first to break Carrigan's record? Or was there someone in between? If Dial was the first, Carrigan's record would have stood for 12 years. That's a long time for a period when the vault was improving so rapidly. Richards held the record for...

Thanks for the info. It's hard to know which of the marks by Dial, Duplantis, and Jenkins were actually records without knowing the dates since they were all made in 1981. Also, the list only goes down to 17'7", so it's possible that someone might have broken Carrigan's record earlier and still not ...

Tommy Skipper's great new national high school record of 18'3" got me thinking about the progression of national records. Casey Carrigan set a national high school record of 17'4.75" in 1969. Brandon Richards set a record of 18'2" in 1985. What I'm wondering is who, if anyone, was the record holder ...