Sword to Shot Put: 10 Olympic Sports You've Never Thought About

Pole Vaulting Poles

Pole: Up to 17 feet long, must be made of one continuous piece of construction (usually fiberglass)

Pre-Olympics, pole vaulting was a mode of transportation used to jump fences and un-bridged rivers during farming, travel, and warfare. Now, it’s an Olympic sport and rightly so. It takes combined precision, speed, and agility to sprint down the runway hauling 17-feet of fiberglass at full speed. Athletes then jam the fiberglass pole into a tiny divot and catapult themselves 20 feet in the air. If they judged right, they spring off the pole at the precise moment they clear the near 20-foot high bar. Now picture doing that over a castle wall with a wooden pole in metal armor. Not simple. Our take? We’re just glad someone invented bridges.