2024 Summer Olympics: A Self-Healing Pole Vault Pole Is One Great Leap for Sports Tech

July 26, 2024:

The Swiss company CompPair focuses on composites with the goal of making products more repairable. Its hallmark composites rely on what CompPair calls HealTech technology to create a healable surface. The way it works is that when something gets scratched or dinged, heating up the resins that hold fibers together could soften them and let them slowly seep back into shape.

The process isn’t instant. Depending on the break it can take minutes, or sometimes a day or more. But once it’s done, the compound should be reset to almost as good as new. To be clear, this process has never been used in a vaulting pole. CompPair has tested its composites on mostly flat surfaces that are easier to control for. Getting those composites into a vault pole—while maintaining the integrity of the structural fibers—is a whole other challenge.

CompPair cofounder and CTO Robin Trigueira says there is a world in which utilizing these kinds of composites could help usher in more repairable sporting equipment. Trigueira says he can envision a possible future where Olympic stadiums provide very long ovens that vaulters can place their healable poles in overnight to ensure they’re nice and sealed before event time.

“I think it’s possible.” Trigueira says. “But we must test it thoroughly to learn something like this.”

Self-Healing Future

The trouble with using these composites inside something like a pole vault is that it is exceedingly complicated to make sure it solves the problem at hand. Adding a new composite because it is healable could also add a whole variety of new variables that could not mix well with the structural components of the pole. Adding a gloss on the surface to make cracks visible could change how the vaulter grips the pole.

Every crack and divot is different, and may not heal the same depending on how it develops. There might be some damage that is too structural to melt away with a little bit of composite redistribution. Depending on the defect itself, it may take a long time to fix. Also, heating the healable resins might mess up the other composites.

Trigueira compares the process to an injury on the body. If you’ve just got a scratch on your arm, you might not even bother to do anything about it, and it will heal quickly. But something deeper and more serious will take more time to figure out, and may lead to additional complications.

“It’s very rare that you suffer the exact same injury as somebody else,” Trigueira says. “Is the part taking little scratches, or more deep wounds? This we need to know in order to be efficient in the healing.”

The idea of using healable composites in poles is also not a new one. It has been around since at least 2017, but no healable poles have been created—yet. Rahrig says Essx isn’t currently working on any efforts to add such a healing resin or composite to its poles, though doesn’t discount that some day it might be utilized to make a longer lasting pole.

“We’re investigating materials like this all the time,” Rahrig says. “That’s purely research level right now. It’s very interesting, but how it would be used in a pole, I’m not so sure.”

Outside of Olympic competitions, pole vaulting has a smaller presence in the sporting world more broadly. There isn’t much money in pole vaulting, so it’s likely these kinds of materials will appear elsewhere first. Trigueira says CompPair is not currently working with any pole vault companies to put its composites in their products, but says it is working to implement them in more prominent sports equipment such as surfboards and bicycle pedals.

So while it may be some time before this sort of innovation graces the humble vaulting pole, both Rahrig and Trigueira say it’s both possible and likely. “In 10 years, I think, it’s a safe thing to say there would be a pole vault with healable composites,” Trigueira says.

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