Word: warmerdam
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...even too hard to believe Cornelius Warmerdam, who at 67 has stopped vaulting and does not mind saying how high men can go: 24 ft. No matter how powerful the man, or how pliable his swizzle stick, Warmerdam says 24 ft. That's just his opinion, but he knows something about these things...
...Warmerdam vaulted 15 ft. in 1940 when everyone, including Warmerdam, thought it was impossible. "It was like the sound barrier," he says. Before anyone else made 15 ft., eleven years later, Warmerdam had done it 43 times. He held the world record 15 years. "Of course I go back to when the pole was a pretty stable instrument," he explains. Warmerdam's first bolt of bamboo carried him over high hedges and cringing livestock all across his father's spinach farm in California's San Joaquin Valley. His records were built of bamboo; steel and aluminum poles...
...equipment is better," says Warmerdam, "but so are the athletes. It's a combination." Just as the pole vaulter himself is a combination: sprinter, weight lifter, gymnast. He is characteristically happy. "Because," says Warmerdam brightly, "it is just a fun thing...