Pole vaulters biggest challenge: Getting their poles to Paris

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PARIS — A few months before she traveled to the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials earlier this summer, pole vaulter Brynn King began researching how to transport her poles from Rochester, N.Y., to Eugene, Ore.

The Division II pole vault national champion knew from others’ horror stories that a dwindling number of airlines were still willing to carry poles and that they were too long and cumbersome to fit on certain types of aircrafts.

The least inconvenient flight option that King found departed from an airport a three-hour drive from her home. She booked the Air Canada flight from Toronto to Portland only after verifying with the airline that they would take her poles as checked luggage.

When King and her coach Jenn Suhr went to check in at the Air Canada desk, the agent who greeted them steadfastly insisted that King’s poles were too big to fit on her flight. Then another agent approached and tried to charge King for each of her 14-to-15-foot poles individually rather than requesting a single sum for her 100-plus-pound bag.

It wasn’t until Suhr stepped in and spoke up that they began making headway. Suhr, a former longtime pro and two-time Olympic medalist, demanded that the agents send for Air Canada’s highest-ranking executive on the premises.

“I literally would have gone home when the first lady told us the plane was too small,” King, 23, told Suhr after Air Canada finally took the poles.

“This is what you have to learn,” Suhr replied. “They’re always going to tell you no. You have to ignore them and find the person the highest up that knows everything.”

For the men’s and women’s pole vaulters at the Paris Olympics, the most stressful part of their sport isn’t clearing bars or competing for medals. That inspires far less anxiety and dread than figuring out how to transport their poles to and from competitions.

Pole vaulters who spoke to Yahoo Sports said they travel with six to 10 fiberglass or carbon-fiber poles that cost up to $1,000 apiece and range in length from 14 to 17 feet. They carry the poles in long bags that resemble what a giant might use to hold his skis.

The irony isn’t lost on them that the same equipment that enables them to fly through the air during competitions can keep them grounded before or afterward. Delta, American, United and JetBlue have stopped accepting poles on flights, pole vaulters said. Among major domestic carriers, they say Southwest is one of the few that still does.

When flying overseas, there are more options but also more intricacies. American pole vaulter Sam Kendricks recalled learning the hard way once that Air France will only take two sets of poles on one flight. That means if three pole vaulters book the same Air France flight to a meet, one is out of luck and can’t take their poles aboard.

"There's a rubik's cube of logistics you have to know in order to get your poles around," said Kendricks, who on Monday night finished second behind world record holder Mondo Duplantis in the Olympic men's pole pole vault competition.

For pole vaulters, the hassles don’t end when they manage to persuade an airline to transport their poles to and from a meet. All pole vaulters have a horror story of having their poles lost, damaged or even snapped in half.

The first time Kendricks flew internationally for a competition, the former Ole Miss standout flew to Kazan, Russia, to compete in the 2013 World University Games. He recalls showing up to the Delta desk at the Memphis Airport and being asked to fork over $1,000 dollars for the airline to transport his poles.

“I had to put it on somebody else’s credit card and then figure out how Team USA was going to pay me back later,” he told Yahoo Sports.

While Kendicks won the competition in Russia, the price of victory was high. His poles didn’t show up when he arrived home, so he filed a missing baggage report. Two weeks later, Kendricks recalled, they arrived in Oxford, Mississippi, via delivery van in “an obviously unnatural state.”

“They were broken in 1,000 pieces,” Kendricks said.

Other pole vaulters have similar tales of woe.

Here’s one from Tokyo 2021 Olympic gold medalist Katie Moon.

And another from American record holder KC Lightfoot.

And a doozie from Saint Louis University track and field coach Jon Bell.

Having poles lost or damaged before a meet is especially frustrating for pole vaulters because it means competing on borrowed poles. They equate that to a PGA golfer competing at a major with someone else’s set of clubs.

And yet while occasional incidents like those may be frustrating and expensive, ex-U.S. Olympic pole vaulter Derek Miles cautions against complaining. Miles, who now coaches University of South Dakota pole vaulters and Tokyo silver medalist Chris Nilsen, said that if poles get broken during air travel, he often eats the expense and doesn’t file a claim.

“I don’t know what we’d do if Southwest said they’re not taking them anymore,” Miles told Yahoo Sports. “If we lose those, then some coach or staff member is going to have to throw them on an SUV and start driving them across the country for a meet before the team gets there.”

Throwers who have to lug their hammers or javelins or shot puts overseas often sympathize with the pole vaulters. They, too, have occasional travel nightmares.

After a previous trip to Paris, American hammer thrower Rudy Winkler made the mistake of trying to take a few hammers in his carry-on bag because the luggage he checked in was overweight. When he went through airport security, the officers there stopped him and told him he couldn’t take the hammers on the flight because they were too heavy.

“They went through every single item of clothing in my bag and wiped it down as if I was doing something malicious,” Winkler said. “I don’t know if they thought I had a weapon or what. It was crazy.”

To a man, though, other field athletes admit that pole vaulters have it the worst.

The few American pole vaulters with lucrative sponsorships might be able to afford to have two or more sets of poles. That enables them to reduce travel stress to some extent by stashing at least one set overseas in Europe.

Since his most prestigious meets are typically in Europe, Nilsen keeps his favorite set of poles overseas. He actually went and retrieved them so he’d have them for the U.S. Olympic Trials in June. Then he flew them back to Europe immediately afterward so that he could feel secure that they would be waiting for him when he got to Paris for the Olympics.

The set of poles that Kendricks used to win a silver medal on Tuesday night were in Stockholm with his close friend Duplantis prior to the Olympics. The nine-time world record holder was nice enough to store them for Kendricks until he came to pick them up and fly them to Paris a few weeks before the start of the Olympics.

Kendricks transported them to Paris via Icelandair, a carrier he has found to have an unusually pole-friendly policy.

“That’s actually been a really good solution recently,” he said.

At the U.S. Olympic Trials earlier this summer, American women’s record holder Sandi Morris told Yahoo Sports that she fears for the future of pole vault if the number of airlines that will take poles continues to dwindle. Professional pole vaulters don’t have a team to support them, Morris pointed out. It’s usually just the athlete and maybe an agent or coach.

Other current and former pole vaulters say that Morris isn’t exaggerating when she said that the transport issues are endangering the sport.

“At the end of the day, if it gets too difficult, somebody or some organization with some clout will have to throw some real weight around if they care about pole vaulting,” Kendricks said. “Otherwise it will come to a head where only the richest, most famous pole vaulters can travel with their poles and find a way and everyone else doesn’t have a chance.”