For Olympic pole vaulters, hammer throwers, getting there (with your equipment) is half the fun

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This article was published 02/08/2024 (785 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — One of America’s very best in the medieval-looking pursuit of hammer throw thought she had seen it all when it came to lugging that 8.8-pound hunk of metal, along with the handles and the chain, across the globe.

Then, a few years back, DeAnna Price arrived in Beijing.

The note from the Transportation Security Authority notifying her they had opened her case wasn’t all that unusual. The hole they drilled into the hammer in an apparent attempt to find contraband or weapons, then sealed up with epoxy — well, give those security guards a gold medal for leaving no stone unturned.

“I definitely sent them a bill for that one,” Price said of her ruined piece of equipment that goes for around $1,000.

Thankfully for the 2019 world champion, the TSA reimbursed her.

Price’s ordeal is one of hundreds of tales from the road for all the hammer throwers, pole vaulters, javelin hurlers and shot putters who have descended on Paris to bring the “field” to Olympic track and field, starting Friday. For most of them, simply making it to the games is the dream of a lifetime. Getting their equipment there — sometimes, that feels like quite a triumph, as well.

Pole vaulters are often first to the airport

When pole vaulter Sam Kendricks arrived in Croatia a few years ago but his poles did not, he figured he’d do what he’d done many times before and borrow a different pole that was around the same dimensions and stiffness as his. Not ideal, but what else could he do?

Out of nowhere, as he was warming up, he heard sirens approaching the stadium.

The emergency? Turns out, the poles had been located, and the mayor had gotten in touch with the town’s police force to rush them to Kendricks. Paramedics carted them out to him just in time for him to jump.

He won that day. Talk about the “VIP” treatment — Very Important Poles.

“You become this animal of a stress sponge,” Kendricks said of the typical trials and tribulations involved in parading his poles from place to place. “You eat everybody else’s stress because you’re first in the airport and you’re the last to leave.”

Convincing a gate agent that 17-foot poles can fit on a plane

Need to get a pole to Poland, rush a discus to Denmark or hurry a hammer to Hungary? Kendricks’ partners on the pole-vault circuit, Sandi Morris, can point you in the right direction.

The Olympic silver medalist not only has a travel-agent’s familiarity with airline timetables, she can also tell you which carriers barely blink an eye at a 17-foot-long piece of checked luggage and which ones do.

She typically shows up at the airport five hours early. But she’s the first to concede that, sometimes, all the planning in the world can’t overcome bad luck. Morris knows if she walks up to the wrong ticket agent — say, one who doesn’t know the difference between the pole vault and a pet carrier, a flurry of calls will ensue and new arrangements will have to be made on the fly.

In case of emergency, she stores one set of poles in Europe with fellow vaulter Renaud Lavillenie. Morris has heard many tales of poles being broken in transit. Katie Moon, she said, had it happen to her one time.

“You have to just be ready for anything,” said Morris, who didn’t qualify for Paris. “Because sometimes you encounter somebody who’s never seen poles before and they can’t believe that they can fit them on the plane. So then it takes three hours to get on the plane.”

Using video to explain their sport to security officials

Hammer thrower and U.S. Olympic trials champion Daniel Haugh got stopped by authorities in Turkey, who were genuinely baffled by the contents of his travel case. He had to pull out his phone and show the Turkish police videos on his Instagram account to demonstrate what he did for a living.

“It was a whole ordeal,” Haugh said.

Other times, security has inspected his equipment but forgot to close the latch on the case.

“If you don’t have the lock on the outside, you’ll just get an empty case that they didn’t latch shut,” he said. “And there’s no hammers inside.”

You aren’t allowed to carry on a 16-pound metal ball

If permitted, American shot putter Payton Otterdahl would carry that 16-pound metal ball on the plane with him. But that’s not an option.

“It’s a weapon, apparently,” Otterdahl explained.

Thousands of years ago, huge rocks the size of the “shot” that Otterdahl and Co. use today were, indeed, used as weapons. Legend has it that ancient and medieval cultures used to have contests involving “throwing the stone” to see who their strongest men were for battle.

Not until the 19th century in Scotland did people start “putting” that 16-pound rock of metal for cash and prizes.

None of which makes Otterdahl’s life any easier.

Before his trips, he carefully packs the shot in his suitcase. Same with Italy’s Leonardo Fabbri, the shot put silver medalist at world championships last year, who wraps it inside his clothes to keep it secure.

“It’s my baby,” Fabbri said. “It’s worth more to me than anything else, because together we want to achieve great things.”

On point

Javelins don’t weigh that much (between 600 and 800 grams) but they’re more than twice as long as the longest golf club. And given that they are, essentially, spears with sharp points makes it tricky to get them through the airport.

American javelin thrower Curtis Thompson has seen meticulously packed and protected javelins come out of their carrying tubes with scratches — or, worse, sometimes even bent. There is always the option of throwing the “house javelin” — the one they keep at the stadium — if theirs don’t arrive.

“We just hope for the best and if something happens, you just try to adapt,” said Thompson, who usually brings three or four javelins with him just in case.

Decathletes are the world’s greatest luggage packers

They often bestow the title of “World’s Greatest Athlete” on the champion of the Olympic decathlon.

Too bad there’s no gold medal for packing luggage, too.

Decathlete Harrison Williams recalled walking through the airport for the 2019 world championships in Doha with two baggage carts loaded down with his poles, javelin and a few more bags that contained his discus and shot.

“It’s comical the amount of stuff we have to bring,” said Williams, who also has an entire suitcase dedicated to shoes.

The questions from bystanders are inevitable. In college at Stanford, he and his teammates used to joke they were carrying goal posts or the mast for a sailboat.

“People rarely guess poles unless they know pole vault,” Williams said.

Getting to Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, was a family affair for decathlete Zach Ziemek. He flew out of Madison, Wisconsin, with boxes containing a shot put, two discuses and his shoes. His wife and father traveled from a different airport to transport his poles.

“That flight they were on was a 12-hour travel day, but me flying out of Madison was a six-hour travel day,” Ziemek said. “So, it was a team effort.”

The easiest equipment to pack is clearly the discus

The discus is compact and sleek enough to fit into a carry-on bag. Still, the circular apparatus frequently raises eyebrows at security. That’s why Germany’s Henrik Janssen packs his 2-kilogram disc with his clothes.

American discus thrower Joseph Brown used to get stopped and quizzed about what he was carrying. He signed up for TSA Precheck and hasn’t been bothered since.

“Now, it’s a breeze,” Brown said.

So much easier than what some of these field athletes have to schlep.

“I get really jealous of the discus throwers and shot putters,” says Price, the hammer thrower. “But I’m not jealous of the pole vaulters. They are a different breed of amazingness.”

Says Kendricks, the two-time world champion in field’s “longest” event: “That’s why you see so much camaraderie out there on the track, because we walk a very difficult road together. It’s an unseen burden sometimes.”

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AP Sports Writer Andrew Dampf contributed to this report.

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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games