Stuart Weir, the senior writer for Europe for RunBlogRun, wrote this piece with Katie Moon, the 2021 Olympic champion, the 2024 Olympic silver medalist, and the 2022 and 2023 World Champion. Moon is one of our most popular RunBlogRun athletes and continues to lead American women’s pole vaulting.
Katie Moon recalls the 2024 Olympic pole vault final
The qualifying competition for the women’s pole vault at the Paris Olympics ended in some controversy. The rules were that the top 12 would qualify for the final. 11 athletes cleared at 4:55, and a further 15 were successful at 4:40, but all had three failures at 4:55. Nine of the 15 had no failures before 4:55, while 6 had had an earlier failure.
The officials seemed to have three options: allow just the 11 who had cleared 4:55 to progress to the final, have some kind of jump-off to enable one of the nine who had had no failures before 4:55 to take 12th place, or—and this was what they opted for—allow all nine to progress to the final. Of course, that meant there would be 20 athletes jumping in the final—actually 19, as one withdrew.
Successful athletes concentrate on what matters and get on with it. I’m not sure St Francis of Assisi had the format of the women’s pole vault in mind when he prayed, “Lord help me to change what I can change, to accept what I cannot change and to know the difference” but his words were very relevant to the 2024 Olympic pole vault. Kate Moon commented, “I didn’t necessarily agree with taking that many people, but once you know the circumstances, you can mentally prepare for it. And that’s just what I did, but it is not ideal. The pole vault is an incredibly long competition – as it is with 12 women, without adding another nine. I don’t know what the correct answer was. I think it probably was to take eleven of us instead of requiring 12. Or if they have to have 12, then some form of a tiebreaker jumps off, but I think it was ultimately the wrong choice.
It was way too long, and I mean, we saw the standards break once it reached a certain point. Unfortunately, it hindered what could have been an even better pole vault competition. All three of us could have jumped higher. I don’t know that the results would have finished out any differently regarding medal placement, but it hindered what could have been an even better competition. “
In a recent…
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