The following article on Princeton University's website was written by Jerry Price. Photography by Seth James. It appeared two weeks before the NCAA indoor meet at Albequerque where Sondre Guttormsen won the pole vault at 19' 8 1/4 ". Sondre's brother Simen was injured and could not compete. Video: Sondre Jumping at Harvard 19' 2"
Men's Track and Field March 09, 2023
Feature Story: The Guttormsen Brothers And The Crazy Event They've Mastered
“Stavhopp er den tøffeste øvelsen i friidrett.” — Fred Samara
THEY LAUGH THEY ALL LAUGH.
The brothers. The father. The coach.
What is it about this endeavor — one that makes you part sprinter, part gymnast, part physicist,
part astronaut — that brings that sort of universal reaction? They’ve all tried it. They’ve all excelled at it.
Their laughter is their badge of honor. It’s their way of acknowledging the absurdity of the task,
the courage required to try it in the first place, the skill needed to master it.
That’s why they all laugh at the simple question asked of them: What is it about the pole vault?
THERE ARE FIVE INSCRIPTIONS of the name “GórmR” that have been found in the ruins dating
to Norway’s Viking Age, which means 1,500 or so years ago. Eventually, that short form evolved into
“Guttorm,” an Old Norse word that meant “spare” or “honor.” At some point, Norwegian names adopted
the Icelandic custom of adding “sen” to the end of the last name, meaning “Son of,” which in this case
turned “Guttorm” into “Guttormsen.”
“Everyone in Norway can trace their lineage back to at least 1200,” Atle Guttormsen says from his
home in Ski, a small city just outside of Oslo. “I know names of our family from the 1600s.”
Atle is a professor of economics at the Norwegian University for Life Sciences and a former
Norwegian national-level track athlete who tried the pole vault but ended up being a better hurdler.
The latest generation of the Sons of Guttorm — his sons? They’re another story.
They are pole vaulters, through and through. Sondre and Simen, both Princeton seniors, are among
the very best in the event, in the NCAA, and in the world. Sondre is a two-time NCAA champion who
will chase another indoor title this weekend in Albuquerque. Simen finished fourth indoors and outdoors
last year and would have been a potential top-two finisher this weekend were he not nursing an injury.
Sondre, the Norwegian record holder in the event, competed at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo. He’s also
in the top five in the world indoors this winter. Sondre and Simen are both members of the Norwegian
team for this summer’s World Championships and are both almost certainties for the Olympics in Paris in 2024.
Sondre is the older of the two, 18 months older, in fact. Their looks are classically Scandinavian, with
blonde hair and blue eyes. They speak with slightly discernable accents, the result of all of their time
spent in the United States.
The brothers have been their own best influences. They’ve encouraged each other, coached each
other, pushed each other, taught each other supported each other — even fought with each other,
though “not too much. You know. Like brothers do,” Sondre says.
“They’re different, but they’re the same,” their father says. “To outsiders, Simen might seem like more
of an introvert. Maybe he waits a little longer to say what he’s thinking. Sondre is a classic extrovert.
He tells you right away what’s on his mind. Simen is more of a computer science, math, physics guy
than Sondre, but they’re both really smart. They go to Princeton, right?”
Yes, they do, which is nearly 4,000 miles away from their hometown. They grew up in Ski, which
seems like the perfect name for a Norwegian town, until you realize that it’s pronounced “She” and
not like the winter sport that so many there do.
“Every family in Norway goes on ski trips,” Simen says.
His father is right. Upon meeting the brothers for the first time, Simen does come across as the
quieter of the two. Sondre is louder and talks faster. Both laugh easily. Both speak humbly about
their accomplishments. There is a strong brotherly connection between them, to be sure. It’s
impossible to miss. As they talk about their upbringing, their introduction to sports, their experiences
in the United States, they often talk on top of each other and often make fun of the other. When they
can’t remember exact facts and dates, or when they disagree, they shift from English to Norwegian to
get clarity and then back to English to present the correct answer.
If you didn’t know what their sport was and saw them only in their “Princeton Athletics” gear, your
first thought wouldn’t necessarily be track and field. Simen looks like an outfielder or a three-point
shooter. Sondre looks like a linebacker. As adults, they look like they could literally play anything they
wanted to; as kids, they did, including skiing, European handball, soccer, hockey, basketball and gymnastics.
They grew up 100 meters away from a track at a local school, and at first they were sprinters and hurdlers.
With their all-around athleticism, they could have been decathletes. Instead, they took to the pole vault
very early.
The pole vault looks so effortless when done the way the Guttormsens can do it that it’s
easy to forget just what goes into it. As track and field events go, it’s unique. Actually, as
far as anything else in any sport goes, it’s unique.
It’s the only event in track and field that requires an instrument to assist the athlete in the
event. Every other event is about how fast you can run, how far you can throw something
or how high you can jump over something on your own accord. It’s just you and the event.
The pole vault is a whole different animal. Hey, what other sporting endeavor has this on its
Wikipedia page:
“Speed is an essential element to high vaults. The horizontal kinetic energy produced by the
run (Ek=1/2mv(squared)) is converted to vertical propulsion (Ep=mgh). Assuming no loss of
energy (Ek=Ep), this means that h=v(squared)/2g.” Yes, this is clearly a different animal than,
say, “On your mark, get set, go.”
“In other words, the vaulter’s potential height is not linearly related to their runway velocity,
but is actually a function of the square of the velocity,” says August Kiles.
If anyone knows about the pole vault and the science behind it, that would be August Kiles,
Class of 2018 and an an elite vaulter himself during his time at Princeton, during which he
won his own Heps titles, set the records that Sondre broke, was a team captain and an
operations research and financial engineering major.
“The faster the vaulter is, the greater their potential to jump high,” he says. "It’s a super
complicated motion, and there are many, many other variables in play, but make no
mistake—in pole vault, speed is king.”
So you have physics. And sprinting. What else?
“When someone would tell me they were a pole vaulter,” says Princeton’s former women’s
coach Peter Farrell, “my response would always be the same. I’d say “Yeah? What kind of
gymnast are you?’”
It’s gymnastics to be sure. It’s also way more than that.
Competitive pole vaulting dates back to the early 19th century. At first, there were more
competitions to see how far a vaulter could launch himself, as opposed to how high he could
go. There are still a handful of those events to this day.
As for the pole itself, it can be anywhere from 13 to 17 feet long, with a two-inch diameter.
Poles today are made from highly flexible composite materials, largely fiberglass, as
opposed to the wooden poles that were originally used.
“The pole is not particularly heavy,” Samara says. “Maybe 10 pounds or so. But it gets heavy
when you hold it near the top. Then it can really feel heavy.”
Each jump starts with a sprint, with the pole obviously, of about 50 yards, before the pole is
planted in the box.
“All of the vaulter’s speed from the run is absorbed into the pole at takeoff," Kiles says. "We
call this ‘loading the pole.’ Then the vaulter swings upside down and is launched vertically,
reclaiming the energy they generated, and clearing the bar if all goes well. It’s one thing to
run fast with a pole in your hands; it’s a whole different thing to take that speed and transfer
it efficiently into height. And that’s really what sets great vaulters like Sondre and Simen apart.”
As the vaulter leaves the ground, he or she kicks the feet upward, pulling the knees to the
chest while the back is parallel to the ground. Think about just that part of it. You’ve just
sprinted 50 or so yards, and now you’re being propelled upwards. You’re essentially lying
on your back, only you’re elevated. All that is holding you up is the pole.
In the next millisecond, the vaulter needs to begin to straighten out, until the legs are straight
up in the air and the head is upside-down. The body is now a straight line, upside down,
holding the top of the flexed pole that is now U-shaped, one end planted in the box, and the
other end gripped tightly by the vaulter with both hands.
As vaulters are flipping upside down, they push — or “row” — the pole over to the opposite
side of the body than the side they carried it during the sprint. Then, once they have launched
themselves upward in the air and flipped upside down, they do a half-twist, like a diver. As
the feet and legs begin to rise above the bar, the vaulters bend at the hips to drop their feet
down over the bar as they throw the pole backward toward the runway and then snap the
torso, arms, and head backward to clear the bar.
“The better you get, the further away from the box you are when you plant the pole,” Samara
says. “Sondre is 14 or 15 feet from the box. You have to travel all that distance holding onto
the pole before you get to the bar.”
What’s that like?
“It’s like you’re in space,” Samara says. “It’s very scary until you get used to it.”
Of course, if you’ve managed to do all that, there’s the slight matter of the drop, which takes
you down from above the bar (hopefully) into a pit of three feet of foam that awaits you about
two stories down.
“That’s the easy part,” Samara says. “Really, it’s all physics. The speed of the takeoff. The
angle of the takeoff. The pole has to move to vertical. The pole has to work as a pendulum.
If you do it right, it’s a pretty effortless looking thing.”
So what is it all like? What are they feeling as they’re clearing the bar and landing? What do
they see?
“It’s over in a blink,” Sondre says. “You put the pole in the box, and then I don’t even know
what’s happening. You don’t really remember seeing anything. There’s just a lot of adrenaline.
You’re flying the air.”
Like all elite vaulters, they’ve practiced every element over and over and over, until it’s second
nature. They make adjustments here and there to every facet, large and small. When it comes
to the actual competition, the actual act of going from the ground to the bar and back down, you
might think time slows down a bit, but it doesn’t.
“It happens so fast that there are limited things to think about,” Simen says. “You can’t go through
the steps in your head while you’re doing it. You just have to have it be automated.”
It wasn’t always that way.
WHEN YOU THINK OF NORWAY, you think of the outdoors. You think of Vikings and skiing
and snow. You think of the natural beauty, particularly the Fjords, the mountain-enclosed bodies
of water that are simply stunning. The Guttormsen family has a boat that they’d take out into the
North Sea each summer.
“My favorite thing about Norway is the long summer nights,” Sondre says. “The sun is out all
night, and you can be with your friends on the beautiful beaches or by the unique rock formations
by the ocean. That’s called ‘svaberg’ in Norwegian. The water there can warm up o 78 degree
Fahrenheit.”
There’s something else about the country he loves.
“I also have to say that my favorite thing about Norway is that my family is there.”
The Guttormsens have been there for centuries. Almost every branch in the family tree is 100
percent Norwegian, with just a little German mixed in.
Atle grew up in Ski as well. His athletic career ended on the national level, and he became a
college professor. His work is in economics, and specifically in agriculture and fisheries.
“Salmon farming is big business here,” he says. “I teach economics and finance, but much of
my research has been related to fish. My university had been an agricultural university, but they
added a business school. That’s how it started for me.”
The boys were young when Atle introduced them to the pole vault. How young?
Sondre: “We were 8 and 7.”
Simen: “No, 5 and 4.”
Sondre: “That young?”
Then they speak in Norwegian for a second.
Sondre: “However old we were, we must have thought it was fun, because we kept doing it.”
At first, Atle would have the boys climb a ladder and then hold onto the pole, which he would
carry to the pit.
“That way, we got the feeling of being up in the air without having to be any good at it,” Sondre
says.
“They tried all kinds of events in track when they were young,” Atle says. “I thought it would be
fun for them to try the pole vault, and they had fun with it.”
THEIR BIG BREAKTHROUGH CAME when Atle was on a sabbatical at UC-Davis in 2010.
“They had just started a track club there that was associated with the high school,” Atle says. “I
told them that I had an 11 year old and nine year old. The head coach said we could join them.
There were 200 kids on the track team. It was at Davis Senior High. They were 11 and nine, and
they got to train the whole season. When we got back to Norway the next year, the pole vault
was their event.”
The boys began to show steady improvement, improving by more than a foot each year, going
from being able to clear eight feet all the way up to 17 or 18 feet. Sondre improved from 17-9 to
18-10 in one year, between 2017 and 2018, and he would finish sixth at both the European and
World Junior Championships.
When it came time to go to college, they both wanted to come to the United States to compete.
Sondre considered Harvard but instead went to UCLA, mostly because he loved the idea of
being in California. While at UCLA he battled injuries but still managed to earn second-team
All-American honors indoors (finishing ninth) and outdoors (finishing 10th) while setting the
UCLA indoor record of 18-9.5 in 2019 , his only year competing.
Simen, in the meantime, graduated high school a year early and then took classes at a Norwegian
university for a year before thinking about his opportunities in the U.S., where he was looking for
the best academic challenge he could find. An operations research and financial engineering
major, he reached out to Princeton and Cornell and chose Princeton. He came to college as a
very good, but not yet elite, vaulter.
“He was 5-0, 100 pounds,” Sondre says, in that way that brothers talk to each other, with the
actual numbers probably a little higher, though not much.
With Simen at Princeton, Sondre soured on his UCLA experience. He reached out about
transferring, and he became one of the 13 transfer students the University accepted that year.
Not transfer athletes. Total transfers.
“It’s the best decision I’ve made,” Sondre says.
“One day, Simen came to practice and asked if his brother could transfer to Princeton,” Samara
says. “I told him that I didn’t think so, but I went to the administration. The most difficult thing
was that he had to repeat his sophomore year, but that wasn’t that big a deal, since they wanted
to be in the same class anyway.”
Sondre went through the process and was accepted. His first year was 2020-21, which he did
remotely from Norway. He wouldn’t compete on the NCAA level for two years, but he did qualify
for the Norwegian Olympic team and did get to compete in Tokyo, where he unfortunately suffered
a quad pull on his first attempt.
“I had a really good prep for it,” Sondre says. “I was doing well in practice. I jumped 5.70 meteres
in training in both Norway and Japan [that mark would have qualified him for the Olympic final.
The whole experience wasn’t what people would expect. I spent nine days in a hotel with my
father and a few Norwegian athletes. It was isolating. People were tested for Covid every day,
and everyone was scared of testing positive. Then I got hurt. Still, it was my first Olympic
experience, which is special.”
He would finally arrive on campus for the 2021-22 academic year and join Samara’s team,
which was quite likely the greatest Ivy League track and field team ever put together. How
would Sondre adjust and fit in?
“I had observed him compete on TV and nationally a few times,” Samara says. “I observed that
he was always putting tremendous pressure on himself, and he was always getting hurt. I could
see he’d lost a lot of the joy of competing. The first week of school, I sat him down and told him
two things. First, he had to stay healthy. Second, he had to have fun. He had to enjoy track and
field. From that point, his personality changed. He’s just a great team guy. He loves being on the
team, loves being at Princeton. He roots for the other guys. He helps them however he can.
He's been awesome.”
“Everything has been amazing,” Sondre says. “The team. The coaches. I never realized the Ivy
League would have that good of a team with athletes who are serious as we have. We have a
lot of athletes with Olympic dreams. It’s been great to be around this environment with similar-minded
people.”
Simen’s international career began with the European U-18 championships in Hungary in 2018,
and he also has won Norwegian U-18 and U-20 championships. The start of his Princeton career
was not as auspicious, beginning with the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA championships and
then no competition the following school year.
The brothers were finally teammates a year ago, and the results were special. Sondre won the
NCAA title both indoors and outdoors, while Simen finished fourth both times. Together, they
were part of a team that finished fifth indoors and seventh outdoors, shockingly amazing finishes
for an Ivy League school that saw Princeton finish ahead of traditional powers like Oregon,
Stanford and Arkansas, among others.
They are already the two best pole vaulters in Ivy League history. Princeton crushed the field at
the Ivy League Heptagonal championships indoors and outdoors a year ago and won indoors
again two weeks ago at Dartmouth, where Sondre again won the pole vault. Simen missed the
meet with an injury, the same injury that will keep him sidelined in Albuquerque.
Sondre, in fact, didn’t attempt a jump at Heps until every other vaulter was finished. Then he
calmly cleared the bar to take the win and then raised the bar seven more inches, clearing that.
In between the trip to Hanover and the trip to Albuquerque, Sondre also made a quick trip over
to Instanbul, competing in the European indoor championships, which he won with a vault of 5-8
(19 feet). He is ranked among the top vaulters in the world right now.
“He’s a legitimate medal threat at the Olympics,” Samara says.
First, there is the NCAA meet this weekend and then the outdoor season. The brothers will be teammates again next year, though not at Princeton. Instead, they’ll compete as grad transfers
at Texas, where Simen will again study ORFE and Sondre, a psych major, will study sports management.
Their career goals? They have them, but they’re on hold for a while. The Olympics are their
immediate postgraduate goal.
Sondre and Simen have been talking for about 30 minutes now when Sondre lets slip a fact that
to this point has not been mentioned. Atle has taken numerous sabbaticals to UC-Davis, and
Sondre’s mother Kristin actually gave birth to him in California, giving him duel citizenship and
checking off at least one potentially important box, in the event it ever comes to that.
“Hey, that means you could technically be the President of the United States,” Sondre is told.
He laughs at this. Then he looks at Simen, who was born in Norway.
“You can’t,” he says.
Then he laughs. It’s the laugh one brother uses when he’s busting on another brother. It’s a
playful laugh, a laugh that is part of their familial glue.
It’s a different laugh than he used, that they all used, when they first were asked about the pole
vault. That one was a merit badge of a laugh. That one came from conquering the fear of
launching yourself seemingly into outer space, powered only by the physics of the pole itself.
There’s a different laugh that the event elicits. This one comes from John Mack, the Ford Family
Director of Athletics at Princeton and himself a 10-time Heptagonal sprint champion when he
was at Princeton. When he hears Samara speak, he asks what the subject is. The pole vault,
he’s told.
“Have you ever tried it?” he’s asked.
That’s when he gives off the other kind of laugh. It’s the one that says “no way, not me, no
chance.”
“Stavhopp er den tøffeste øvelsen i friidrett,” Samara says.
Of course, Samara actually said it in English. The brothers translated it into Norwegian.
What does that mean?
It means “The pole vault is the most difficult event in track and field.”
No matter how easy the Guttormsen brothers make it look.
— by Jerry Price
