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Cornelius Warmerdam
Warmerdam took a bamboo pole about as far as it could go. In 1940 he became the first man over 15 feet, and his 4.77m in 1942 stood as the world record for 15 years, an astonishing span in an equipment-driven event. Wartime cancellations meant he never had the chance to compete at an Olympics. He is the benchmark for what pure technique, speed and strength could do before stiffer and then bending poles arrived.
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Bob Richards
Born
Richards, an ordained minister nicknamed the "Vaulting Vicar", won Olympic gold in Helsinki in 1952 and Melbourne in 1956 in the era of rigid metal poles. He remains the only man to win the Olympic pole vault twice, and his consistency in championship conditions, more than any single height, made him the dominant vaulter of the 1950s. He was also the first athlete to appear on the front of a Wheaties box.
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Bob Seagren
Born
Seagren's career is the fibreglass revolution in one story. He broke the world record several times with the new bending poles and won Olympic gold in Mexico City in 1968. Then, weeks before the 1972 Munich Games, the governing body banned the new model of pole he and others had been using, confiscated it, and handed him an unfamiliar replacement; he took silver behind Wolfgang Nordwig and protested angrily. No other career shows so clearly how equipment rules can decide an Olympic title.
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Władysław Kozakiewicz
Born
Kozakiewicz won the 1980 Moscow Olympic title with a world record of 5.78m while a hostile home crowd whistled at him, and answered with a defiant arm gesture that became a symbol in Poland. Technically he was a fast, aggressive vaulter who exploited the fibreglass pole's whip as well as anyone of his time. Winning with a record, in a stadium against him, is one of the event's great examples of nerve.
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Sergey Bubka
Born
Bubka and his coach Vitaly Petrov turned the vault into a sprint-and-power event: a very fast approach, a high grip on a stiff pole and an active take-off that drove the pole rather than waiting for it to bend. The result was 35 world records, the first clearance over six metres in 1985 and six straight world titles. He often raised the record a centimetre at a time, which some found calculating, but his 6.14m outdoor mark stood for 26 years.
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Emma George
Born
George came to the vault from Australia's Flying Fruit Fly Circus, and her trapeze-honed body control was exactly what the newly recognised women's event needed. Between 1995 and 1999 she broke the world record 11 times, taking it to 4.60m, and won the first women's Commonwealth title in 1998. She did more than anyone to show the event's potential before it joined the Olympic programme, though injury blunted her chance at the home Games in Sydney.
More about Emma George7
Stacy Dragila
Born
Dragila, a former rodeo athlete and hurdler, won the first women's Olympic pole vault in Sydney in 2000, having already taken the first women's world title in 1999. She brought a speed-based, sprinter's approach to an event still finding its technical identity and broke the world record repeatedly in those years. Every women's vaulter since competes in an event she helped define.
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Yelena Isinbayeva
Born
A trained gymnast who switched to the vault at 15, Isinbayeva brought inversion and body control the women's event had not seen before. She set 28 world records, became the first woman over five metres in 2005, and won Olympic gold in Athens and Beijing. In her peak years she worked with Bubka's coach Vitaly Petrov, a direct link between the two greatest record breakers of their eras. Russia's suspension kept her out of the Rio Games.
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Steve Hooker
Born
Hooker's 2009 world title in Berlin is the most remarkable piece of competition management in the event's history: injured, he passed his way up the bar, took a single jump at 5.90m and won. A year earlier he had won Olympic gold in Beijing with an Olympic record, built under coach Alan Launder on a long, fast run and very high grip. His later struggle with losing his nerve on the runway is an honest reminder of how psychological the vault is.
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Fabiana Murer
Born
Murer's career is a lesson in how much a vaulter depends on equipment. In the Beijing 2008 Olympic final one of her poles went missing mid-competition and she finished well down the field. She recovered to become Brazil's first world champion in the event in Daegu in 2011, then won silver in 2015. Coached throughout by her husband Elson Miranda, she built a smooth, gymnastic technique that took South American women's vaulting onto the global stage.
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Jenn Suhr
Suhr took up the vault late, after a college basketball career, and was coached throughout by her husband Rick Suhr in a training set-up of their own in upstate New York. Her strength and fast, powerful run made her the main rival to Isinbayeva: Olympic silver in Beijing, then gold in London in 2012, and an indoor world record of 5.03m in 2016. She shows how far an unconventional route into the event can go.
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Renaud Lavillenie
Born
At 1.77m, Lavillenie is small for a vaulter, and he compensated with remarkable speed and a technically precise, gymnastic swing. In Donetsk in 2014, in Bubka's home city and with Bubka watching, he cleared 6.16m indoors to break a world record that had stood for 21 years. He won Olympic gold in London in 2012 and silver in Rio, and he has kept competing for well over a decade, even building a vaulting set-up at his family home.
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Katerina Stefanidi
Born
Stefanidi is the thinker's vaulter: a Stanford graduate, coached by her husband and fellow vaulter Mitchell Krier, who treats the event as a technical problem to be solved jump by jump. That analytical approach produced Olympic gold in Rio in 2016, the 2017 world title and a decade of medals at European and global level. She is a fine example of steady technical refinement winning out over raw physical gifts.
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Thiago Braz
Born
Braz trained in Italy under Vitaly Petrov, Bubka's old coach, and at the Rio 2016 Olympics in front of a home crowd he gambled on 6.03m, cleared it at the second attempt and beat the favourite Lavillenie with an Olympic record. It remains one of the great all-or-nothing performances in the event; he added bronze in Tokyo. His later career was interrupted by a doping suspension in 2023 after a positive test for ostarine, which does not affect his Rio title.
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Sam Kendricks
Kendricks, coached by his father Scott and a US Army Reserve officer during his early career, is the most consistent championship vaulter of the Duplantis era who is not Duplantis. He won world titles in 2017 and 2019, Olympic bronze in Rio and silver in Paris. His clean, efficient technique and composed approach to each attempt show how a vaulter without the very highest ceiling can still collect medals year after year.
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Katie Moon
Born
Moon won Olympic gold in Tokyo and world titles in 2022 and 2023, and the second of those changed the event's culture. In Budapest she and Nina Kennedy, level after a long competition, agreed to share the gold rather than go to a jump-off, echoing Barshim and Tamberi in the high jump. Her steady, rhythmical run and willingness to talk openly about the mental load of the event have made her one of its most influential voices.
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Nina Kennedy
Born
Kennedy shared the 2023 world title with Katie Moon, then made it hers alone a year later with Olympic gold in Paris, clearing 4.90m. The Australian is compact and very quick on the runway, and her rise from a junior prodigy who struggled with injuries to Olympic champion owes much to her long partnership with coach Alex Parnov. She carries on a line of Australian women's vaulting that runs back to Emma George.
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Armand Duplantis
Duplantis grew up vaulting on a runway in the family's back garden in Louisiana, coached by his father Greg, a former vaulter, with his mother handling conditioning. The result is the most complete technician the event has seen: a fast, relaxed run, a very efficient plant and the ability to vault on longer, stiffer poles than his rivals. He has broken the world record 15 times, most recently with 6.31m in Uppsala in March 2026, and won Olympic gold in Tokyo and Paris.
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