A statue of a Pole Vaulter mid-jump.

The original model was not created by me, but comes from the Morpheus Rig: http://www.joshburton.com/projects/morpheus.asp . I just positioned it in this posture and made it print-ready. Lots of credit to Josh Burton.

Total height about 30cm.
If you make one, please share the results!

Ultimaker

Ultimaker Original

No

Yes

0,1mm (h) x 0,4mm (w)

30%

I have failed several times printing this. Please pay attention to the amount of infill, the limit angle for support, and the adhesion to the bed. The arm broke off once during printing, and the fingers are very vulnerable as they support the weight of the model. Actually one of the two statues misses two fingers because of this, but it could still easily support the model. Because of the required detail, I gave it about 17 hours to print.

I pretty much needed the full bed of the Ultimaker to print it (see picture). You can scale it down further, but then you'd need a thinner vaulting pole, and I don't know if that will support the weight.
As slicer, I used a Beta version 15.06 of Cura, which sucks in many ways, but makes an amazing support structure. It comes off almost entirely invisibly and needs only very little cleaning up.

The vaulting pole is a 3mm steel wire 50cm in length, bent by hand.

When shaped correctly, you can insert the pole into the hands of the athlete without much effort, and you don't even need to glue it in place, as its own weight will secure it.

However, if you do want to glue, use some superglue at the fingers and possibly the feet as well (you can bend the pole so it touches the feet).

The base is a 2,5mm steel plate (100x50mm) with a hole drilled under an angle of about 45°. I stuck the pole through a few millimeters and then welded it into place. I like the industrial look, but you could sandblast the surface to remove the discoloration of the surface.
The assembly now was stable enough to stand on its own, and wouldn't topple over easily. However, because the weld sticks out on the bottom and I didn't want to weaken the weld by sanding it down, I put 6mm of black Nitril Rubber under it to level the bottom.

You can also make the base from wood or any other material. The total weight is quite low, so you don't need that much of a counterweight in the base. You could also paint the model or the vaulting pole. Be creative!