Yes, you can touch the pole vault bar and still get credit for the height. The rule everyone actually cares about is narrower than don't touch it: the bar has to stay on the standards once you've cleared, and how it comes off usually decides whether the miss is on you. Vaulters graze the bar with a shoulder, a trailing foot, or a hip on nearly every make at the higher heights, and officials don't blink at any of it. The one honest wrinkle: a pole you've already discarded can knock the bar off and still count as a clearance if the wind did it, which surprises a lot of first-time vaulters watching their own miss get overturned. The same touch rule applies in the high jump.
A bar that shakes, tips, or even lifts slightly off the pegs and settles back down is a make, full stop. What ends the attempt is the bar actually leaving the standards before you've cleared and landed. That distinction matters because vaulters at any real height are going to make contact somewhere on the way over; the technique goal isn't avoiding the bar, it's clearing with enough margin that contact doesn't carry enough force to knock it off.
If your body, or anything attached to you mid-vault, dislodges the bar before you've finished clearing and landing, the attempt is a miss, even on heights where you obviously got over. This is the rule that trips up vaulters who cleared clean but caught the bar with a trailing foot on the way down into the pit. Once you've fully landed and the attempt is complete, contact from something outside your control, like wind, stops counting against you.
Here's the part that surprises people: your discarded pole can still hit the bar after you've let go of it, and depending on why, that can go either way. If the pole falls back into the bar under its own weight or from a bad throw, it's usually ruled the vaulter's fault. If wind carries a pole you clearly tried to throw clear into the bar, most rulebooks count the clearance anyway, since the vaulter did everything right. Officials increasingly use video review at higher-level meets to sort out the difference in real time, and that same video is exactly what settles the argument when a vaulter insists the wind, not the throw, caused the contact.
Clearing without knocking off requires precise body position over the bar. Most knock-offs are caused by the trailing foot or hip dropping into the bar. AI form check analyzes your clearance and identifies which body segment is the risk.
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The bar staying on the standards decides almost every one of these; here's how the common scenarios get ruled.
| Scenario | Ruling | Rule body |
|---|---|---|
| Bar wobbles but resettles onto the pegs | Valid clearance | World Athletics; NFHS follows the same principle |
| Shoulder, hip, or trail foot brushes the bar without moving it off | Legal, height stands | World Athletics; NFHS |
| Vaulter's own pole knocks the bar off the standards | Foul, ruled a miss even if the body fully cleared | World Athletics |
| Wind blows the discarded pole into the bar after a clear effort to throw it clear | Counts as a clearance, at the official's judgment | World Athletics |
| Pole breaks during the vault | Ruled a non-jump; not scored as a make or a miss | World Athletics |
| Bar falls from a standards or equipment malfunction, not athlete contact | Left to official discretion; a re-attempt is common | Meet officials, varies by competition |
Common questions athletes and coaches ask about this topic.
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