RENO, Nev. -- It sounds like a discriminatory swipe, but it's really just a sign of these high-flying times. "No Poles on Escalators." On either end of the pole-less -- if not Pole-less -- moving stairs at the Reno Hilton, roving gangs of fit young people wear shirts and jackets touting every college you can imagine, and every high school you can't. A giant ballroom is jammed with girls holding really long sticks.
A theater is filled with hundreds of people, from pre-teen to post-retirement, getting a lesson from the best coach in the world -- through an interpreter. About 2,300 people -- athletes, coaches and parents -- have descended from every state and enough countries to form a pole vaulting United Nations.
This is what the winning side of a revolution looks like. The Pole Vault Summit is for insiders. It attracts people from across the country, and the world, for a couple of days of self-love. This is a BYOP party. Everyone brings his or her own pole. A ballroom is devoted to "pole storage" -- a pole "vault" of sorts. People bustle about carrying poles over their shoulders, careful not to turn too quickly. When they stop to chat, they hold the poles upright, threatening light fixtures and sometimes poking dents in the ceiling tiles.
Those without clothes advertising their schools wear shirts touting a meet they've attended or a vaulting club they're in. Some wear blue T-shirts reading, "Vertical Assault." One girl wears one that simply says, "I (heart) PV."
It’s like walking into a Star Trek convention and thinking, "There are this many Trekkies in the world?" you can't help but be struck by the volume of vaulters.
"It's amazing what this does for the energy of the sport," says Derek Miles, a seventh-place finisher at last summer's Olympics. "It's pretty incredible," Mack says. "There are so many more people than you ever imagined."
They crowd the theater Friday night for the invitational vault. Most of the top dozen American men and women compete, using two runways that cross in an X. On Saturday, everyone else gets a chance. Competitions are held in 65 categories.
After the Summit, everything will be packed up and hauled away. The signs at the top of the escalators will come down. Everyone else will take their poles and go home.
And the revolution will spread.
© 2005 Vertical Assault