Old high jump landing areas

Factual Questions
1

I was watching the DVD of Kon Ichikawa’s “Tokyo Olympiad”, a very good documentary on the 1964 games.

During the high jump competition, the competitors didn’t land on the one piece rubber cushions that are in use now, but rather a mound of loose materials. It looked like there were some foam squares of some kind, but I couldn’t figure out what they were.

Regardless, it didn’t look comfortable.

Even the pole vaulters landed on some materials of this kind, but you could see a big cushion underneath.

Any ideas what this was?

It’s also weird to see guys high jump without flopping.

2

Back when I was jumping (albeit not at the olympic level), we had large oval nets filled with foam rubber pieces – the foam rubber was about 2"-4" irregular shapes. The pole vault guys had bigger versions of the same.

The things were a real PITA. They couldn’t get wet, or they would be soggy and smell even worse than normal.

3

Back in the Old Silurian Era the landing pit was just an area filled in with loose sand. That was before pole valuters risked going into orbit.

4

Before foam pits, I recall seeing them use a big pile of wood chips.

5

Thanks. The pole vaulters looked like they were landing in a pile of loose tissues.

A related question to this is: the 1964 Olympic pole vault competition took over 9 hours to finish? Why did it take so long? Presumably there were no time limits then to force the jumpers to move along so they just waited for the most favorable conditions?

6

I high-jumped in 1959-62 in high school. The pit was sawdust.

7

Wasn’t that about when Boston was dreaming of clearing 7 foot?

8

Our elementary school had sawdust landing pits too. I hated doing track and field because you would always get sawdust in some mighty uncomfortable places.