Champion Katie Nageotte competes in the Olympic pole vault final in Tokyo (© Getty Images)
Women's pole vault
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• World indoor champion Molly Caudery leads world list with British record of 4.92m
• Australia’s joint world champion Nina Kennedy showing timely form
• Defending champion Katie Moon, double world champion, ready to play another key role
Molly Caudery has had a highly successful year so far, winning world indoor gold in Glasgow to become Britain’s first senior global champion in this event and then taking bronze at the European Championships in Rome.
Her chances of maintaining podium presence at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games look strong given her British record clearance of 4.92m in Toulouse in June, four centimetres ahead of Australia’s joint world champion Nina Kennedy and Angelica Moser of Switzerland.
Caudery emerged to international recognition when she set a personal best of 4.75m in finishing fifth at the World Championships in Budapest. She improved that to 4.83m in January this year, adding two centimetres in winning the British title in February before adding another centimetre to her best a week later in Rouen.
This exuberant and positive 24-year-old is on a steeply upward curve, although she was beaten by Kennedy at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in London in July.
Kennedy, who agreed with Olympic champion Katie Moon to share the world title in Budapest last year after both had reached 4.90m, gave a dominant performance in the final major meeting before the Games.
She won with 4.85m as Caudery finished third with 4.65m, with second place going to Canada’s 2018 Commonwealth champion Alysha Newman.
Moon had an off day, finishing eighth with 4.50m, but she is fourth on this year’s world list with 4.85m and her record of one Olympic and two world golds in the past three years offers compelling evidence of her ability to rise to the big occasion.
Moser, like Caudery, is also on an upward curve. The Swiss vaulter equalled her PB of 4.78m to win the European title in Rome, then improved to 4.88m to finish second on countback to Kennedy in Monaco.
New Zealand’s 2016 Olympic bronze medallist Eliza McCartney, who was unable to compete at the last Olympics, and the 2022 Commonwealth Games, because of an achilles tendon injury, missed out on world indoor gold on countback to Caudery and is fifth in this year’s world list with 4.84m.
Finland’s Wilma Murto has excelled in the past two years, earning European gold and then European indoor gold and raising her personal best to 4.85m, so is clearly another with a serious medal chance.
Greece’s 34-year-old Katerina Stefanidi, the 2016 Olympic champion, returned to full competitive mode in June as she earned European silver in Rome with a best of 4.73m and will be giving everything to do the same in Paris.
Italy’s hopes will rise with Roberta Bruni, who won the national trials with 4.55m.
Men's pole vault
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• Mondo Duplantis seeking a second Olympic gold and, perhaps, a ninth world record
• Chris Nilsen and resurgent Sam Kendricks represent US challenge
• Ernest John Obiena and Emmanouil Karalis bubbling under
The expectation is always there for Mondo Duplantis. Break the world record. Good. Do it again. Good…
On April 20, at the first Wanda Diamond League meeting of the season in Xiamen, he raised the bar for the eighth consecutive time, leaving it, for now, at 6.24m.
What can he do in Paris in defence of the title he won three years ago in Tokyo?
Mondo Duplantis in the Olympic pole vault final in Tokyo (© Getty Images)
Well, the same thing he has done in the past three years, when he has won Olympic and then successive world golds.
But the 24-year-old Swede does not take his phenomenal record for granted.
While he secured the world indoor title in Glasgow in March with 6.05m, he had faltered at 5.85m, clearing it at the third attempt, and afterwards admitted: “This was the hardest I have ever worked.”
His old nemesis Sam Kendricks of the United States, the 2017 and 2019 world champion, was competing like a man inspired on his return to this level of competition after illness and injury.
The 31-year-old produced five successive first-time clearances up to and including 5.90m but was unable to do any more, taking silver.
Kendricks, who has a best this season of 5.95m, looks capable of a similar level of performance having won the US trials with 5.92m. Chris Nilsen, meanwhile, took silver behind Duplantis at the last Olympics and the 2022 World Championships, then added world bronze last year.
Nilsen is second in the world list with the 6.00m he cleared on 16 February, one place ahead of Ernest John Obiena of the Philippines, who beat him to world silver in Budapest last year. Obiena has cleared 5.97m this season, but in recent weeks has been battling an injury.
Despite his best efforts, Renaud Lavillenie, France’s 2012 Olympic champion and the last world record-holder before Duplantis, failed by one place to qualify for a final Olympics at the age of 37. He had the consolation of being one of the French athletes who carried the Olympic torch in the closing stages before it lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony.
The French banner will instead be carried by Thibaut Collet. He finished fifth at the World Championships last year with a PB of 5.90m, and has improved on that this year with 5.95m.
Meanwhile 24-year-old Emmanouil Karalis of Greece, who has this year earned world indoor bronze and European silver, underlined his medal potential by improving his national record to 5.93m at the national championships. He’ll be keen to improve on his fourth-place finish from the last Olympics.
Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics
