Billy Olson Finds He’s Reaching New Heights : Recently a Forgotten Athlete, Vaulter Is Back in Form but Out of a Record Again

People are usually glad to hear from Billy Olson. A likable Texan with a big smile and a twinkle in his eyes, he’s a good companion, a guy who lights up a room.

But when Olson talked to track promoters early last month, they were cordial only up to a point.

When Olson suggested that he wanted to be in a particular meet, promoters hemmed and hawed and told him obliquely that there was no room for him in their fields.

Now, Olson isn’t just any athlete off the street. In 1982 and 1983, he broke the world indoor pole vault record seven times.

He was the first vaulter to clear 19 feet indoors and the first American over that height. Olson has a flair for showmanship and obligingly helps promoters with premeet publicity, consenting to countless interviews.

But Olson wasn’t much of a factor on the world scene in 1984 and 1985, partly because of injuries and illness.

So it was Billy who?--until he shocked everyone, including himself, Dec. 28 in a rather obscure indoor meet at Saskatoon, Canada.

Olson cleared 19-2 3/4, breaking the world indoor record previously held by France’s Thierry Vigneron at 19-2. Not only that, he cleared the record height on his first attempt.

“How quickly they (promoters) forgot,” Olson said in a phone interview from his home in Dallas. “It was a perfect time to re-establish myself. Now my phone is ringing again like it was in 1982 and 1983.”

Olson said he has never been a good practice vaulter, but before the Saskatoon meet, he was jumping better in practice than he ever had.

“Still, I wasn’t prepared for a world record,” he said. “That’s two inches higher than I’ve ever jumped before. I was in better shape than I thought I was, and the adrenaline was really flowing.”

All of a sudden, the same promoters who wouldn’t return Olson’s calls were trying to contact the 27-year-old athlete.

Now, Olson has his choice of meets, and he’ll be competing Friday night at the Sports Arena in the Sunkist Invitational. As it turns out, though, he won’t be competing as the indoor record-holder. Sergei Bubka of the Soviet Union saw to that Wednesday, going 19-3 at a meet in Osaka, Japan, adding the indoor mark to his outdoor record of 19-8.

So, if Olson was in need of incentive, Bubka suddenly provided it. Olson will be opposing a world-class field that includes France’s Pierre Quinon, the 1984 Olympic champion; Joe Dial, the defending NCAA and The Athletics Congress titlist; Poland’s Wladislaw Kozakiewicz, the 1980 Olympic gold medalist; Earl Bell, a former world record-holder, and Dave Kenworthy, a former NCAA champion from USC.

Olson has been known to wait until the bar reaches 18 feet or higher before vaulting. Sometimes he makes it, other times he fails, getting an undistinguished reference to no height in the printed results.

At Saskatoon, Olson came in at 17-8 and cleared it on his first attempt. He needed only one jump each to make 18-5 and 18-9 before failing to clear 19-0 3/4.

“That was a bad jump, but I came close to clearing it,” Olson said.

So, instead of staying at the same height, Olson had the bar raised to 19-2 3/4.

“I made it on my first jump, and it was a bit of a shock,” Olson said. “I was over the bar by at least four inches.”

Olson declined to go any higher. “If I didn’t think I could do better, I might have gone on,” Olson said. “But I felt I had more nights coming up, and there is a better one (jump) down the road.”

Olson used a larger pole on his record jump and he was holding at 16 feet 5 inches, higher than usual for him.

Theoretically, the higher up the pole you hold, the higher you can vault. But it’s also more difficult to control the pole through the takeoff, upswing and release in an event that is very technical.

“My takeoff hasn’t been right,” Olson said. “I don’t hold the pole far enough away from my body, so my arms have absorbed a lot of the shock. My physical ability should allow me to hold higher.

“I’ve had one problem. I broke my left wrist in 1980 and it never healed properly. Now, I tape my left wrist heavily, almost like a cast, and I’m able to absorb more of a shock on takeoff.”

It often takes a period of adversity for an athlete to realize that the good times won’t always be rolling and to appreciate what one has at that moment. Olson has come to that realization.

“Once you’re out of the limelight, it goes really fast,” he said. “It’s scary. It’s a good motivation for me to stay good. I’ve known about athletes being in slumps, but you don’t really appreciate it until you’re lousy. It happens to everybody. Now, I know what they were going through.”

Olson had been in a slump since failing to make the U.S. Olympic team while his vaulting friends, Mike Tully and Bell, won silver and bronze medals behind Quinon at the Coliseum in 1984.

He said he was so bad during last year’s indoor season that he had to pay his own expenses, travel and lodging to get into the outdoor Pepsi Invitational last May at UCLA.

Olson then cleared 18-8 in a stirring duel with Tully, and meet promoter Al Franken rewarded him with a check for $1,000.

“I was so close to doing things right at the Pepsi meet,” Olson said. “Then I got a case of the flu, lost five pounds and never regained my form.”

Not until Saskatoon, anyway.

Olson, 6-2 and 170 pounds is a former sprinter and one of the fastest vaulters in the world on the runway. Only Bubka and Quinon have comparable speed.

“A lot of guys are fast, but they don’t run fast with a pole in their hands,” Olson said. “Bubka has better technique on his takeoff, which enables him to hold higher on the pole. But the middle part of my vault and the pushoff are as good as or better than his.”

Now that Olson is back in the 19-foot club, can 20 feet be far away?

“That’s the next barrier,” he said. “If I say it won’t happen in 5 or 10 years, it will happen next week. Just maybe, under perfect conditions, Bubka could do it, or maybe it will be me.”

But Olson isn’t worrying about 20 feet. He’s just content that the light is blinking again on his answering machine.

Track Notes Mike Tully, who has been America’s most consistent vaulter over the years, won’t compete indoors this season. He had surgery two weeks ago to remove scar tissue in the groin area. “It had to be done sometime, so I reasoned I might as well do it now,” Tully said.