Pole vaulting is one of the more outlandish Olympic events. The primary instruments of the sport are curious creations'big sticks, between 10 and 17 feet in length, that certain track & field Olympians hold while sprinting, then jab into the ground and hang on to as they hurl themselves through the air to achieve increasingly greater heights. If that sounds dangerous, well, that's because it is. There have been dozens of injuries in pole vaulting, even at the Olympic level. Most of them occur when a vaulter hits the landing pad wrong, or misses it entirely. But there are also often problems with the pole. After all, flinging a human body up to 20 feet in the air takes a lot of kinetic energy, and puts a lot of pressure on the pole. If something goes wrong'even a small, invisible fracture in the pole'that instrument can snap into pieces and send the unfortunate vaulter tumbling to the ground. Pole breaks have had disastrous consequences, causing athletes to suffer injuries as...
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