The Evolution of Vault

The vaulting horse was set up with its long dimension perpendicular to the vault runway for women, and parallel for men.  The vaulting horse was used in the Olympics for over a century, beginning with the Mens vault in the first modern Olympics and ending with the 2000 Summer Olympics.  The horse had been blamed for several serious accidents over the years. In 1988, American Julissa Gomez was paralyzed in a vaulting accident; she died from complications from her injuries three years later.  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 or too high, gymnasts either rammed into the horse's front end, or had bad landings after having problems with their hand placements during push-off.  

Brian Meeker at the 2008 Olympics misses his foot on the spring board and runs into the horse.

 

Following the 1988, 1998 and 2000 problems, International Gymnastics Gymnastics Federation (FIG) re-evaluated and changed the apparatus, citing both safety reasons and the desire to facilitate more impressive acrobatics.  The 2001 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships were the first international competition to make use of the "vaulting table", an apparatus made by Dutch gymnastics equipment company Janssen-Fritsen since the mid-1990s. It features a flat, larger, and more cushioned surface almost parallel to the floor, which slopes downward at the end closest to the springboard; it appears to be somewhat safer than the old apparatus.