Vault records come in pairs for couples
If it’s January, it must be indoor pole vault time. And record time. For the second straight year, Nadine O’Connor of Del Mar, California, has raised the W60 world indoor record, clearing 9 feet, 3 inches (2.82) at the annual National Pole Vault Summit over the weekend at a Hilton Hotel ballroom in Reno, Nevada. (Metric measure wasn’t specified in results.) This apparently beats her own 9-2 from a year ago at the same site.
Nadine’s main squeeze, former javelin WR man Franklin “Bud” Held, made his own foray into the vault wars, clearing 2.60 (8-6 1/4). Bud’s mark fell short of the M75 world indoor record of 2.82 by Carol Johnston in 1988.
Earlier in Germany, world masters champ Wolfgang Ritte tied his own M50 vault WR. Robert Koop reports that Ritte jumped 4.61 (15-1 1/2) at “Jumping-into-a-new-year” PV meeting in Friedrichsfeld, Germany. Three days later his W50 wife, Ute, set a new European indoor record with 2.80 (9-2 1/4) (same as German expat Hillen Stubendorff jumped in 2002 at Boston), Hillen lives in Troy, New York.
So what does this all prove?
The couples that vault together, get high together.
Listed WMA world indoor records for women are here.
Indoor age-group records for men are here.
