How do pole vaulters get from gig to gig?

How do pole vaulters get around, and take their pole with them?

I imagine the pole has to be 1 solid piece to work, but even if I’m wrong the ones I’ve seen in use on TV seem to have only 1 middle joint at most. This still leaves two very long halves. Too big for a car, even on a roof rack. Too big for a bus. Couldn’t be stashed on a train without difficulty. And as for travelling around international sports events, how would you get the thing (or its half sections) on a plane?

I’m assuming pole vaulters have their own pole(s) which they take with them everywhere they compete. Even if they don’t, this only relocates the problem. I mean, how do the people who manufacture these things get them across land, sea and air?

Check out the below site for specifics…

http://speedandpower.com/vault/travel.shtml

I’ll fess up that this is partly a shameless self-bump, because I really want to know the answer to the question. In mitigation, this is one of those instances of the ‘instant vanishing post’. Submitted noon Saturday (my time) and off the first page by 5 pm!

I appreciate Funneefarmer’s link, but it doesn’t really answer my questions.

Any other takers? Or is the Doper community a trifle light on pole vault enthusiasts?

Well if those personal stories weren’t enough for you (did you scroll down and read the stories?) you could hop over to the below site which is home to the Pole Vaulters Community Message Boards. When you need an expert’s opinion, ask the expert.

http://www.polevault.com/community/polevault_community1.html

As a former high school pole vaulter, I can first of all assure you that vaulting poles are entirely one piece – no middle joint whatsoever.

Having only high school experience, I can’t tell you what the big boys at the international level do, but as for us, we schlepped ours along on the school bus. Open up the back emergency exit and slide the poles in no problem. Granted, the pole I used was only 13 feet long – not the 16+ footers used at the Olympic level.

Can’t provide any cite for this, but I remember reading once a feature article about world record-holder Sergey Bubka walking around NYC with his pole over his shoulder. The humourous angle was that in the City of the Weird, nobody batted an eyelash at a man strolling along with a nearly 20-foot long fiberglass pole.

Naah, they use the pole vault to travel cross-country, one jump at a time. A really, really long one is used by vaulters to jump over the Mississippi, but is illegal in competition becuause of its potential of sticking it in a fan’s eye.

I checked a ocuple of pole vaulting forums. The most intelligent post was as follows from VaultWorld

My ex-girlfriend’s mom used to be a pole vaulter (if she isn’t still). She would carry the pole on the side of her car, held in place by two rags looped around the pole in front and back and held in place by sticking the ends of the rags under the hood and trunk.