Lyndell Farmer has been pole vaulting for 60-plus years at track meets and other events, including the past 12 years along a downtown Mobile street surrounded by bars and night clubs.

He was back at it, at age 73, on Saturday along Dauphin Street for the 12th version of the Dauphin Street Pole Vault, an annual invitational that attracts pole vaulters of any age to Alabama’s Port City.

“We’re just a bunch of old pole vaulters who decided, ‘let’s put on a street pole vault,’” said Farmer, recalling the first Dauphin Street Pole Vault that took place in 2011, drawing approximately 70 competitors. At this year’s event, close to 200 are expected to show up to downtown Mobile.

The annual event, interrupted only once in 2020 during the pandemic, is a rarity in Alabama that features a traditional track and field event occurring on a city street typically reserved for downtown entertainment. The first-ever Vulcan Vault, Central Alabama’s first street pole vault event, took place last weekend in downtown Homewood.

“In track and field, a pole vaulter is a rock star,” said Drew Bentley, the Dauphin Street meet director and head track coach at McGill-Toolen High School. “They like the attention. And the atmosphere we have here is unique. They are getting cheered on by their peers and other pole vaulters. The atmosphere is such that they are so hype up, they take chances and run faster and jump higher.”

The Mobile event is a day-long and into-night event that began around 8 a.m. and stretches till 10 p.m. The 2011 version, the first Dauphin Street pole vault, began at 2 p.m.

Farmer said the event is structured so that some of the best competitors — or those who will attempt to leap over a 19-foot tall bar — will compete well into the evening hours.

“It picks up later on,” said Farmer, a longtime track and field coach in the Mobile area whose pole vault club is called Aerial Assault. “We have an NCAA champion who is here. And guys who made world championship teams are here. They will all show up. It’s quite a show.”

Bentley said competitors come from North Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, and as far as California.

He said the event is also good for the downtown bars that experience a lull in activity during the summer months.

“It should be a good shot in the arm for summertime business,” he said.