Some Olympic athletes will carry a piece of North Texas with them at the games. A Fort Worth business makes the poles that four of the six Olympic pole vaulters will use at the games. NBC 5’s Noelle Walker has the story.
Some of the Olympic athletes will be carrying a piece of Fort Worth with them...literally. Essx, located in a Fort Worth business park, makes vaulting poles.
"We are so fortunate that 4 of the 6 athletes that will be competing for the US are going to be on our poles in Paris soon," Essx Vice President of Engineering Don Rahrig said.
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WATCH HEREMaking a vaulting pole in a multi-step process of layering fiberglass and carbon fiber material, baking it, and stress-testing it for performance.
"The athletes have to be confident or have confidence that when they're using the pole, it's going to bend," Rahrig said. "The way the pole bends is subjective, but if the product fails that's not subjective. So durability is number one. Safety is number one."
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SIGN UP Some Olympic pole vaulters can hurl their bodies about 2-stories over the ground.
"Pole vaulting, what it is really, fundamentally; it's about speed turning kinetic energy, which is your mass and your velocity, into potential energy, which is how high they can go to get over a bar," Rahrig said, adding he would not try it. "No, I cannot do that. No chance!"
In addition to the four Team USA Olympic athletes, Essx poles will be used by Olympic athletes from France, Greece, Venezuela, and Great Britain.
