PoleVaultPower.com

2008 Outdoor Men’s Best Height for Year of Birth

1967 – Jeff Hartwig USA 5.70
1968 – Andrei Fedotov MDA 5.10
1970 – Riaan Botha RSA 5.20
1972 – Derek Miles USA 5.85
1973 – Laurens Looije NED 5.32
1974 – Alex Averbukh ISR 5.55
1975 – Viktor Chistyakov RUS 5.60
1976 – Toby Stevenson USA 5.50
1977 – Danny Ecker GER 5.75
1978 – Denys Yurchenko UKR 5.83
1979 – Pavel Gerasimov RUS 5.80
1980 – Spas Buhalov BUL 5.70
1980 – Dachi Sawano JPN 5.70
1981 – Brad Walker USA 6.04
1982 – Steve Hooker AUS 6.00
1983 – Maksym Mazuryk UKR 5.82
1984 – Mark Hollis USA 5.75
1985 – Yevgeniy Lukyanenko RUS 6.01
1986 – Malte Mohr GER 5.76
1987 – Hiroki Ogita JPN 5.56
1988 – Jan Kudlicka CZE 5.70
1989 – Raphael Holzdeppe GER 5.80
1990 – Nico Weiler GER 5.30
1991 – Cheyne Rahme RSA 5.20
1992 – Nariharu Matsuzawa JPN 5.10

1993ff – no vaulters at or over 5.00m on Jalava's World Deep List <tilastopaja.org>, my data source.

Interesting data Roger, but it's hard to visualize, so I plotted it ...


I did this in just a few quick minutes, so ignore the "issues" ...

1. Ages go horizontally right to left (just pretend we're in Bahrain with DJ)
2. The ages were computed from the year-of-birth, so they could be one year out - depending on whether the vaulter was born before or after the day of the year that he jumped his PR.
3. This chart is only good for vaulters ACTIVE in 2008. I think if we dug back further into PV history, we'd find guys like Bubka, Casey Carrigan ... and maybe a few others on the list?

Conclusion: For 2008 at least, the best vaulters are 26-27 years old (Walker and Hooker), with Luky also one of the best at 23. For the rest, you can visualize the gradual increase to world class, then the gradual decrease to obscurity. Not that Hartwig's isn't FANTASTIC for a 41-year-old, but the general trend follows a rather predictable (smooth) curve. You see how Hartwig "beats the curve"?

Derik Miles "beats the curve" at age 37 too, and so does Holzdeppe at age 19!

Kirk

Fun list Roger

Baha I like how Hartwig and Miles screw up the otherwise smooth-ish bell curve.