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Mondo is the official supplier of all the equipment at the Olympics, including the pits and standards. I was recently in Huelva, Spain for the Iberian-American Championships, which were also supplied by Mondo and saw these same designed pits in use there and noticed something: the majority of vaulters were getting stood up and having trouble penetrating into the pit.

I made a closer inspection of the pit there and the top pad is like 6 inches thick, and doesn't taper away from the back of the box as much as the majority of other popular brand pits nowadays. Also, the sides of the pit don't taper as much and look really steep.

Then watching the Olympics tonight which used those same pits, it looked like everyone was having trouble getting their poles to roll over, including the 2 Russians. I watched every jump they aired on NBC over and over, and it seems like as soom as everyone's pole would turn the corner, they would come to an abrupt stop and open up early. You have to really be watching in slow motion and know what to look for, but it seemed like it could have been a factor. Don't know what happened to the girl that broke her leg, but maybe she got stood up and crashed in the box? All speculation of course.

What do y'all think?

dana had no problems rolling poles over. She actually got on some big sticks last night and she said the pit was not a factor in her vaulting.

That's interesting. The IAAF taper is 45 degrees from vertical. USATF taper is 30 degrees.

The pits look fine to me. I have pretty darn good pits made by Bruce, but I wish I had pits like those . . .

Maybe the pit is fine, I don't know. All I'm saying is that if you watch the various jumps shown on NBC, nobody, including the Russians, looked like they were timing up with their poles on top because every pole looked like it was opening up early to me, beating the athlete to vertical, or not getting to vertical at all. There appeared to me to be an abrupt hesitation in pole speed and they seemed to be really close on the backside of the bar and landing more shallow than normal. s***, maybe they were overgripping or on too big a pole, I don't know, but it didn't look like that was the case.

I just watched the tape again, and not every jump shown used the same camera angles, but if you pause and frame advance Isinbayeva's jump, you can definitely see contact made with the pit when the pole turns the corner.

could have even been a shallow box...........................many of the US guys and gals talk about the european facilities and the box is usually the biggest variable. I would guess not since it is the olympic games and Mondo is a staple in track world wide...........i couldnt even imagine them making such a mistake.

Shallow box??? The IAAF specs for the planting box are the same as for NF, NCAA and USATF.

Vaultref wrote:Shallow box??? The IAAF specs for the planting box are the same as for NF, NCAA and USATF.

Unfortunately, specs or no specs, I doubt the IAAF measures and inspects every facility to ensure they're up to code. Boxes can easily be set improperly and float up and out of place in unset concrete, causing an upwards tilt, which essentially causes it to be shallow and increases the angle of the back wall of the box. A lot of the elites I know that compete in Europe have all made note of multiple facilities in Europe with poor runways and bad boxes.

and the ones with deep boxes

I guess the box and pit meant nothing in the finals..............new WR 4.91


and im another cm closer to retiring

lonestar wrote:

Vaultref wrote:Shallow box??? The IAAF specs for the planting box are the same as for NF, NCAA and USATF.

Unfortunately, specs or no specs, I doubt the IAAF measures and inspects every facility to ensure they're up to code. Boxes can easily be set improperly and float up and out of place in unset concrete, causing an upwards tilt, which essentially causes it to be shallow and increases the angle of the back wall of the box. A lot of the elites I know that compete in Europe have all made note of multiple facilities in Europe with poor runways and bad boxes.

# except for one thing, these are the Olympics. That's one facility that was for sure checked for proper setup. I'll agree that there other facilities overseas are like you say. We have some poor sites right here in our own backyard.
There is or are Technical Officials at these meets, which I will add is an extremely difficult position to reach. They check this stuff and if they want to keep their job as a TO, its done by the book with reports to meet managment.

my comment was intented to be sarcastic......................although there are lots of sites around the world with improperly installed boxs...........my point here was for whatever reason, the pits were "thought" to be the reason for Stacys not qualifying through.............the broken leg...........other vaulters not rolling poles over in the prelims. I would tend to agree with you (vaultref) none of these should be on the possible reason list but they were the first things brought up as excuses. Stacy, sadly, had a bad day (has happened on the mens side for the US all too many times), the broken leg - well after it was guessed that the pit might be too hard it was reported that she landed on her feet and her spikes locked up in the mesh (could happen on ANY current pit)..............All of this was a thread of speculations...........none of which were fact and ultimately all were disproved by the dec vault and the womens final ending with a WR of 4.91.

Next time just join in with us as we speculate as to how the facilities MUST have caused something to go wrong because we all know................no one ever just has a bad day or an accident.