This is an excellent piece on Katie Moon, one of our favorite athletes, by Deji Ogeyingbo. Katie Moon was one of our most popular athletes of 2023 and 2024! Deji Ogeyingbo wrote articles on American athletes over the last couple of months.
Katie Moon: The Steady Hand of U.S. Pole Vaulting
Since her Olympic gold medal in Tokyo in 2020, Katie Moon has become synonymous with winning when it matters most. Moon has delivered time and time again, with a remarkable streak of major medals that includes gold at the 2022 and 2023 World Championships and, recently, Silver at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Her success is not just about the headlines and the records, but her ability to perform under pressure. Moon’s consistency at the top of her game has earned her a reputation as one of the most reliable athletes in track and field. After a challenging year marked by injuries, including a troublesome achilles, the 33-year-old could have easily bowed out of the Paris 2024 Olympics. Still, instead, she pushed through and once again secured a podium finish.
“I woke up not feeling very well, just a headache, and I felt like my nervous system was a little flat,” Moon said after the competition. “But I just tried to stay focused. This is the Olympics.”
That level of determination is what has defined her career. Despite struggling physically and battling the pressure of being the defending Olympic gold medalist, Moon’s ability to stay composed when it mattered most was on full display. Moon settled for silver in a competition that saw her good friend, Nina Kennedy, take Gold with a stunning 4.90m vault but expressed nothing but pride in her performance.
“Once I was here, I was just praying that my body would hold up because I felt capable of jumping high and doing something great again,” she said. “And I’m just so, so happy that it did.”
Her approach to this Olympics sharply contrasted with the pressure she felt in the past. After back-to-back gold medals at the World Championships in 2022 and 2023, Moon was now seen as the athlete to beat. But instead of succumbing to expectations, she shifted her mindset. A season marred by injury meant many counted her out, which, in Moon’s case, may have been precisely what she needed. Feeling like an underdog again, she took the pressure off herself, which helped her perform on one of the sport’s biggest stages.
While her body may not have been in peak…
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