Two vaulters finish on 4.95 m and one of them wins. The rule that decides it is called countback, and almost every argument at the end of a vault competition comes from one detail: misses at heights above your last clearance never count. They are free. What counts is how many attempts you took at the bar you last cleared, and then how many misses you piled up on the way there. Below is the order, a worked example you can check against your own results sheet, and the places where the high school rule and the World Athletics rule split.
If two vaulters finish on the same bar, the one who took fewer jumps at that bar places higher. Clearing 4.95 m first time beats clearing it on the second attempt, and that single comparison settles most ties before anything else is looked at. Passes are not misses and do not count against you here or anywhere else in the countback.
Still level, so the judges add up every failure through the height last cleared. This is the part people misread. A vaulter who cleared 4.95 m and then missed three times at 5.05 m carries none of those three misses into the count, because they came above the last cleared height. Two competitors can end a meet with wildly different miss totals on the sheet and identical countback numbers.
If both counts come out equal and the tie is for second, third, or a scoring place, the vaulters share it. There is no jump-off for anything but first. A tie for the last qualifying place is treated the same way, and World Athletics resolves it by applying the same countback. If the athletes are genuinely tied after that, all of them go to the final. What happens with attempts and eliminations before you get to a tie is on the pole vault attempts rules page.
Countback rewards the vaulter who clears first time, and first-time clearances come from repeatable takeoffs rather than from a heavier pole. Film your competition jumps and AI shows you which attempts drifted, so the makeable heights stop costing you two attempts each.
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Work down this list in order and stop as soon as the tie breaks. Under World Athletics Technical Rule 26.8 and the NFHS rule book the first two steps are identical.
There is no tie unless the final cleared heights match. A vaulter who cleared 4.95 m beats one who finished on 4.85 m regardless of how clean either competition was.
Count every jump each tied vaulter took at the height they last cleared, including the successful one. Fewest jumps takes the higher place. One attempt beats two, two beats three.
Still level, so total every failure from the start of the competition up to and including the height last cleared. Fewest total misses takes the higher place. Ignore everything that happened above the last cleared height, and ignore passes entirely.
If both counts are equal and the tie is for any place other than first, the vaulters share that place and the points are split between them. That is the end of it.
Each vaulter takes one jump at each height until the tie breaks. Under World Athletics the jump-off begins at the next height after the height last cleared and moves in 5 cm steps, up if more than one clears and down if all fail. A vaulter who declines a height forfeits any claim to the higher place.
NFHS starts the jump-off at the height the tied vaulters failed and moves in 3 inch steps, roughly 7 cm, rather than 5 cm. No passing is allowed in an NFHS jump-off. If everyone eligible withdraws before it starts, they tie for first and the points are divided.
Read the marks the way a results sheet does. O is a clearance, X is a miss, and a dash is a pass. All four vaulters finished on 4.95 m, so the countback decides everything.
| Vaulter | 4.85 m | 4.95 m | 5.05 m | Attempts at 4.95 | Total misses to 4.95 | Jump-off | Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | O | XO | XXX | 2 | 1 | 5.05 X, 5.00 O | 1 |
| C | O | XO | XXX | 2 | 1 | 5.05 X, 5.00 X | 2 |
| B | XO | XO | XXX | 2 | 2 | n/a | 3 |
| D | O | XXO | XXX | 3 | 2 | n/a | 4 |
| What decides it | Step 1 drops D to fourth | Step 2 drops B to third | Step 3 splits A and C | ||||
| Note on the 5.05 m misses | None of the three misses at 5.05 m count | They are above the last cleared height |
Common questions athletes and coaches ask about this topic.
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