by Stuart Weir
Katie Nageotte, photo by British Athletics
Stuart Weir wrote this piece on Katie Nageotte, the 2021 Olympic champion in the pole vault. The women’s pole vault was one of the most exciting events in the Olympics in 2021. In this piece, Stuart wrote this piece on Katie’s next goal, five meters.
Chasing five meters.
Katie Nageotte will remember 2021 as the year that she fulfilled one of her big ambitions by becoming Olympic champion in women’s pole vault. However, that simple sentence doesn’t at all do justice to quite a traumatic year which came good in the end. She caught Covid and struggled with lingering symptoms then her poles got broken and finally she got food poisoning two weeks before leaving for Tokyo. Then as she warmed up just before the Olympic final the quad in her take-off leg was so tight that it kept grabbing. With a restricted warm up she had two failures at the opening height of 4.50 before the day, and the year, had a happy ending.
Katie Nageotte, photo by British Athletics
One big ambition remains however – joining the elusive 5m club of women pole vaulters. There are currently four* athletes who have achieved the height:
Yelena Isinbayeva (5.06 m in 2009)
Jennifer Suhr (5.03m indoors in 2016)
Anzhelika Sidorova (5.01 in 2021)
Sandi Morris (5m in 2016)
Nageotte’s PB is 4.95, achieved at the US Championships in 2021. She cleared 4.90 for the first time at the end of 2020 and followed that with four more 4.90+ jumps in 2021.
She describes attaining 5m as “pretty important” but adds “but if I had to retire tomorrow I would be very happy with how my career has gone” before confidently declaring “I know I have a 5m jump in me. I know it’s not going to come easy and that’s what I’m motivated by and working towards. It would be big and I’m definitely gunning for it. I’m definitely looking for higher”.
She believes she is ready: “I have done the work, so I think it just comes down to a day when things line up, a day when I’m jumping well, when I’m explosive on one of my bigger poles. I don’t think I have to do anything special or anything crazy – nothing different from what we’re doing. I work hard, I lift hard and as long as I’m doing that, that is where the work is done to make those bars fall. Or rather to make those bars stay and the records fall!”
She will be doing her winter work, having ticked off the Olympics and thinking what she needs for the next goal: “I think I have 5m within my capabilities, even if we keep everything the same as last year. But in every pre-season I’ve got faster and stronger and more powerful and that’s how I am coming into this pre-season. 5m is a high bar and there’s a reason why only three* women in the history of the sport have cleared it and I don’t want to make it sound that I don’t respect it. I know what it is and I’ve been that high in the air – but the bar didn’t stay on. It’s just a matter of making sure that everything else lines up”.
A World Championship in Oregon with a home crowd behind her might just be the moment when it all comes together.
*Four women have cleared 5m, three outdoors and one indoors.
Katie Nageotte, photo by British Athletics
