Nina Kennedy in the pole vault at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (© Getty Images)
The pole vault is by nature an attritional contest. The contenders are eliminated one by one until the winner remains, but the women's pole vault final at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games became an endurance test akin to a series of Survivor.
After three hours and 22 minutes, a technical failure with one of the neon-lit upright poles, and the distraction of three other medal events being decided around them, Australia’s Nina Kennedy was the last woman standing, adding her first Olympic gold medal to the world title she shared last year.
Her first-time clearance at 4.90m clinched the title, ahead of USA's defending Olympic champion Katie Moon, who took the silver on a countback from Canada’s Alysha Newman, after both jumped 4.85m.
With 19 women in the final, this was always going to be a marathon rather than a sprint.
In the first hour, no athlete was eliminated. The clear out began at 4.60m, when the first six were eliminated.
At 4.70m, another four failed to clear the height, leaving nine still in the contest after two hours.
At 4.80m the medal contenders began to separate themselves as joint world champions Moon and Kennedy, Newman and European champion Angelica Moser all made first-time clearances.
The 2016 Olympic champion Aikaterini Stefanidi and bronze medallist Eliza McCartney, along with 2022 European champion Wilma Murto, were among the four to exit the contest at that stage.
Czechia’s Amalie Svabikova scraped over on her final attempt, setting a national record to stay in the medal hunt.
Kennedy took a solo lead for the first time with her opening clearance at 4.85m after Newman, Moon and Moser had all missed.
Newman and Moon made amends in the second round, while Moser missed and then passed on her third attempt, gambling that she could clear 4.90m to claim a medal, while Svabikova left the competition.
Moser’s challenge ended with her first jump at 4.90m, leaving the medals to be decided between Kennedy, Moon and Newman.
Kennedy raised the stakes again with another successful first attempt after Newman and Moon had faltered. Moon passed at that stage, while third-placed Newman elected to take her three jumps, but could not improve her position.
That left the same two protagonists in a duel for the gold medal as they were at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest last year, where they elected to share the gold medal when they were tied at the final height of 4.90m.
Kennedy had already announced she would elect to jump off if they tied again at the Olympics.
As the competition pushed past the three-hour mark, the medals were still undecided.
When Moon knocked the bar on her first two attempts at 4.95m, the Australian was left as the champion, and she elected not to jump again.
At 27, former teen prodigy Kennedy has finally fulfilled that early promise, having struggled in the transition from junior to senior competition, before learning to fly with coach Paul Burgess, a former six-metre vaulter.
She arrived in Paris full of confidence after beating all the other contenders in both the Monaco and London Diamond League meetings leading into the Games, and delivered on the biggest stage of her life.
She said winning in Budapest last year had set her on the path to this victory.
“Sharing with Katie will go down in history as one of my favourite competitions ever, but it really just ignited this self-belief in me that 'damn, girl, you ARE good enough to win an outright gold medal', and maybe I didn’t think that before Budapest, but now I definitely do," she explained.
“I have genuinely thought about (winning the Olympics) every single day since those Budapest World Championships. The night I finished Budapest – equal gold, amazing – but my first thought was: “Okay, now I have to win the Olympics.'"
Given the challenge of an extended final competition in Paris, she told herself: “The winner of this competition is going to be the person that can maintain their focus for the longest… I was really trying to calm myself out there.”
Kennedy’s self-belief is now at such a level that she also thinks she can challenge the world record of 5.06m in the coming years, and she said that was her new ambition.
Moon described the competition as a “battle”.
“It was so much fun," she said. “I do feel like we could have kept going if we did not have the standard break, but I am so happy to walk away with a medal today. This year has been really tough. I felt like if my body could hold up, that is what I could be capable of, if not higher. I am so happy it came together on the final day.”
Newman overcame a neurological condition to return to the top level of the sport, and she was delighted to set a national record of 4.85m to win her first Olympic medal.
“Now I’m hungry for more," she said. “Bronze is cute, but silver and gold? I got to get up there."
Nicole Jeffery for World Athletics
| WOMEN'S POLE VAULT MEDALLISTS | ||
| 🥇 | Nina Kennedy (AUS) | 4.90m SB |
| 🥈 | Katie Moon (USA) | 4.85m =SB |
| 🥉 | Alysha Newman (CAN) | 4.85m NR |
| Full results | ||
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