2024 Summer Olympics: Self-healing pole vault pole is a huge leap forward for sports technology

swiss company Compeer focuses on composites with the goal of making products more repairable. Its hallmark composites rely on what Compere calls HealTech technology to create a healable surface. The way it works is that when something gets scratched or stained, heating the resins that hold the fibers together can soften them and allow them to slowly spring back into shape.

This process doesn’t happen instantly. Depending on the break, it can take a few minutes or sometimes a day or more. But once it’s done, the compound should be almost as good as new. To be clear, this process has never been used on vaulting poles. CompPair has tested its composites mostly on flat surfaces that are easy to control. Getting those composites into vault poles—while maintaining the integrity of the structural fibers—is an entirely different challenge.

Robin Triguera, CompaRair’s co-founder and CTO, says there’s a world in which using composites like this could help create more repairable sports equipment. Triguera says he can envision a possible future where Olympic stadiums provide very tall ovens in which vaulters can place their treatable poles overnight to make sure they’re nice and sealed before event time.

“I think it’s possible,” says Triguera. “But we’d have to do a lot of testing to know for sure.”

Self-healing future

The trouble with using these composites inside something like a pole vault is that it’s very complicated to make sure it solves the problem. Adding a new composite because it’s fixable can also add a lot of new variables that may not blend well with the structural components of the pole. Adding gloss to the surface to make cracks appear may change how the vaulter holds the pole.

Every crack and pit is different, and depending on how it develops, it may not heal in the same way. There may be some damage that is too structural and can’t be melted away with a little composite redistribution. Depending on the defect, it may take a long time to heal. Also, heating the cured resin may damage other composites.

Triguera compares the process to an injury to the body. If you just have a scratch on your hand, you might not bother doing anything about it, and it will heal quickly. But if there is a deeper and more serious injury, it will take longer to heal, and may also lead to additional complications.

“It’s very rare that you’ll have the exact same injury as someone else,” says Triguera. “Is the area just a scratch or a more serious injury? We need to know that so we can be efficient in our treatment.”

The idea of ​​using healable composites in poles isn’t new either. It’s been around for a long time at least since 2017But no curable poles have been created yet. Rahrig says Essex is not currently working on any efforts to add such curative resins or composites to its poles, though he doesn’t rule out that someday it could be used to make longer-lasting poles.

“We’re investigating materials like this all the time,” says Rahrig. “It’s totally at the research stage right now. It’s very interesting, but I’m not sure how it will be used in the poles.”

Outside of Olympic competitions, pole vaulting has little presence in the wider sports world. There isn’t a lot of money in pole vaulting, so it’s likely that materials like this will show up elsewhere first. Triguera says Compere isn’t currently working with any pole vault companies to infuse its composites into their products, but he says it is working to implement them into more prominent sports equipment like surfboards and bicycle frames.

So, although this type of innovation may take some time to come to the modest vaulting pole, both Rahrig and Triguera say it is both possible and probable. “I think it’s safe to say in 10 years there will be a pole vault with healable composites,” says Triguera.

Correction: 07/26/24, 8:51 am: Clarified that Compair is working on healable composites for bike frames, not bike pedals.