Cornelius Warmerdam

Pole Vaulter

• Born: June 22, 1915
• Birthplace: Long Beach, California
• Died: November 13, 2001
• Place of death: Fresno, California

Sport: Track and field (pole vault)

Early Life

The son of Dutch immigrants, Cornelius Anthony Warmerdam was born in Long Beach, California, on June 22, 1915. While still a young child, Cornelius, with his family, moved to a farm near Hanford in California’s San Joaquin Valley. As a senior at Hanford High School, Cornelius pole-vaulted 12 feet 3 inches, placing third in the state. In 1933, a traveling salesman observed him vaulting 13 feet in a spinach field and recommended him to the track coach at nearby Fresno State College, later known as the California State University, Fresno. The coach there convinced Cornelius to enroll at Fresno State, where, after he graduated in 1938, he became a teacher.

The Road to Excellence

While a student at Fresno State, Cornelius vaulted an impressive 14 feet 1 3/4 inches. He first won the U.S. vaulting championship in 1937. That year, William Sefton and Earl Meadows, known as the “Heavenly Twins,” had each achieved a world record height of 14 feet 10 3/4 inches, but no vaulter had broken the long-sought 15-foot barrier.

The Emerging Champion

Standing about 6 feet tall and weighing approximately 170 pounds, Cornelius established his first world record in the pole vault in a track and field meet in Berkeley, California, on April 13, 1940, when he vaulted 15 feet. Several months later, in Fresno, he became the first to break the 15-foot mark with a vault of 15 feet 1 1/8 inches. In 1941, he set world records—three times. He vaulted 15 feet 2 1/2 inches and followed that with a vault of 15 feet 4 1/4 inches. In Compton, California, on June 26, 1941, he leaped over the bar at 15 feet 5 3/4 inches.

The following year, 1942, Cornelius raised the world record twice, first to 15 feet 6 1/8 inches and then, on May 23, 1942, in Modesto, California, to 15 feet 7 3/4 inches. Not until 1951 did another pole-vaulter, the Reverend Bob Richards, jump 15 feet. The world mark Cornelius established at Modesto stood for almost fifteen years before it was broken by Occidental College’s Robert Gutowski.

Indoor competition was equally rewarding for Cornelius. He broke the indoor record for the pole vault on February 7, 1942, before a crowd of seventeen thousand at the Millrose Games in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Cornelius’s favorite vaulting pole had been delayed in transit from the West Coast, and he was forced to use a borrowed pole, shorter than he generally used, but he still vaulted 15 feet 3/8 inch. In 1943, in Chicago, he established an indoor record with a vault of 15 feet 8 1/2 inches. All in all, he made forty-three successful vaults more than 15 feet during his athletic career.

Cornelius became widely known by his nickname, “the Flying Dutchman.” In 1942, he was the recipient of the Amateur Athletic Union’s (AAU’s) prestigious Sullivan Award, given to the athlete “who by his or her performance, example and influence as an amateur, has done the most during the year to advance the cause of sportsmanship.”

Continuing the Story

In addition to winning the James E. Sullivan Award, Cornelius was elected to the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame when it was established in 1974. One honor he did not achieve was an Olympic gold medal. Like many athletes, he was not able to compete in 1940 or 1944, as no Olympics Games were held during World War II.

Cornelius served in the United States Navy during the war. In 1946, at the age of thirty-one, he retired from vaulting competition, becoming an assistant track coach at Stanford University, where he earned a master’s degree; thus, he did not compete in the 1948 Olympic Games in London, where American Guinn Smith’s winning pole-vault measured 14 feet 1 1/4 inches, a height Cornelius probably could have surpassed.

Cornelius returned to Fresno State College as the head track coach, a position he held for many years, and led the Fresno State Bulldogs to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II track and field championship in 1964. In 1980, Cornelius retired as professor of physical education after thirty-three years of coaching and teaching at his alma mater. He and his wife had five children, four sons and a daughter, but none of them followed his path to athletic greatness.

Summary

In time, Cornelius Warmerdam’s numerous 15-foot vaults seemed to pale when compared to the 20-foot vaults of Russia’s Sergei Bubka. By the end of the twentieth century, women vaulters had broken the once-formidable 15-foot barrier. Whereas Cornelius and his contemporaries used bamboo poles in their vaulting efforts, in 1957, Bob Gutowski broke Cornelius’s outdoor record using an aluminum pole, which was soon to be superseded by the fiberglass pole. The latter provides much more flexibility, or “whip,” for the vaulter, which explains the significant advance in vaulting records since Cornelius’s era.

In 1943, at the height of his fame and prowess, “the Flying Dutchman” became the subject of a popular comic book published by True Comics: Cornelius Warmerdam, Human Sky Scraper. In 1975, Cornelius was still vaulting, if not as high as in his youth. In that year, at the age of sixty, Cornelius vaulted 11 feet 4 inches to win the national decathlon championship for competitors sixty years of age and older.

Bibliography

Fimrite, Ron. “A Call to Arms.” Sports Illustrated 75, no. 18 (Fall, 1991): 98-108.

Litsky, Frank. “Dutch Warmerdam, Pole-Vaulter, Dies at 86.” The New York Times, November 15, 2001, p. D10.

Wallechinsky, David, and Jaime Loucky. The Complete Book of the Olympics: 2008 Edition. London: Aurum Press, 2008.

Warmerdam, Cornelius. Pole Vault Training and Technique. Inglewood, Calif.: Gill Sporting Goods [n.d.].