Two meters and beyond with Nicola Olyslagers

Two meters and beyond with Nicola Olysagers

I always find high-jumper Nicola Olyslagers an engaging athlete to talk to. There are so many interesting things about her, from her notebooks to her analysis and assessment of every jump. Then, there was her description of training during COVID on the beach on the Australian coast. “The sea was my ice bath. I was always glad to see dolphins as it meant there were no sharks around!”

In Paris, for the second successive Olympics, she took silver. I began by asking her what made the Olympics different from a World Champs, Diamond League final, etc. if you were still just high jumping against the same people: “That’s a great question. I think what’s really special about the Olympics for me is that no matter where somebody is in the world or whatever age of life, everybody has this value for what the Olympic Games means. And you can have the best competition of your life two days before the Olympics, and nobody in the world knows. But then, when it comes to the Olympics, there’s this stage and this platform where people turn on the TV not just to see great things but also to be inspired. I really love that about the Olympics”.

1. Did your Tokyo success give you extra Olympic confidence that you could do it again?

Nicola Olyslagers: I love being under pressure, and in the Olympic Games, just once every four years (or three years now) I can really prepare in such an attitude and such a mindset to go towards the goal, and I was confident that from what I did in Tokyo there was a lot of belief involved in that, and my body shape and my athlete career since Tokyo has been, I would say, even more consistent. So yeah, it gave me hope that at the Olympic Games preparation wise, we were in a very good place.

2. Talk about the pressure of that last jump to win.

Nicola Olyslagers: I think pressure reveals what’s really deep down. It’s as if the storm reveals the strength of the foundation. So when I’m in that position with the pressure building, I learn what’s inside of me. That isn’t just the training that I’ve done, but it’s every part of me and sometimes without pressure, I would never really know deep down what is important until that moment.

3. Why is two meters so important in…