thumb|right|Vault figure
The vault is an artistic gymnastics maneuver typically performed on a pommel horse or a vaulting table. Both male and female gymnasts perform the vault. The English abbreviation for the event in gymnastics scoring is VT.
The apparatus
thumb|left|upright|Original vaulting horse configuration (women)
thumb|Original vaulting horse configuration (men)
German Friedrich Ludwig Jahn popularized the vault's early forms. The apparatus itself originated as a "horse", much like the pommel horse but without the handles; it was sometimes known as the vaulting horse. The horse was set up with its long dimension perpendicular to the run for women, and parallel for men. The vaulting horse was the apparatus used in the Olympics for over a century, beginning with the Men's vault in the first modern Olympics and ending with the Gymnastics at the 2000 Summer Olympics.
Following an accident in 1988 and compounded by incidents in 1998 and 2000, International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) re-evaluated and changed the apparatus, citing both safety reasons and the desire to facilitate more impressive acrobatics.
Dimensions
thumb|Modern vaulting table
- Length: ±
- Width: ±
In competitions
Event
Gymnasts (both male and female) show one vault in Qualification, Team Final, and All Around Final. The gymnasts must perform a second vault during qualifications to qualify for vault apparatus finals. In the Apparatus Finals gymnasts must also show two vaults.
The execution score is out of 10.0, looking at the form, height, length, and landing. Judges look through four main phases: the preflight, support, after-flight, and landing. Gymnasts are expected to land cleanly, with no hops or steps, and within a set landing zone on the landing mat. Falling or stepping on landing incurs deduction, as will lack of height off the table, or distance from the table.
Vault families
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Vault styles are broken into various groups or families. To compete in a vault final, a gymnast must perform two vaults from different groups whose second flight phase is not identical.
Vault groups (men)
There are four vault categories for men: During warmups at the 1998 Goodwill Games, Chinese gymnast Sang Lan fell and suffered paralysis from a cervical-spine injury. In a series of crashes when the horse's height was set too low at the 2000 Olympics, gymnasts either rammed into the horse's front end, or had bad landings after having problems with their hand placements during push-off.
In 2007, Dutch junior gymnast Imke Glas was seriously injured after a fall on a vault.
A 2021 study suggested that landing scoring criteria for vault in women's gymnastics increased the risk of injury compared to the criteria in men's gymnastics. Both this study and an earlier one from 2015 recommended allowing more flexion at the knees during landing to reduce impact-related injuries.