by Stuart Weir
Katie Moon wins in Rabat
Regular readers will know that I am a fan of Katie Moon. She is a great pole vaulter a World and Olympic champion and a thoroughly nice person who is always happy to talk. She is American but her husband is British, so she deserves at least half marks!
She has had a good start to 2025, She competed four times indoor and recorded four wins. 4.80 in Manhattan, 4.82 at Millrose, 4.83 at Lievin, France and 4,80 at the US indoors. She was second in Doha with 4.63. Then in Rabat it was another win with 4.73.
She said of her performance in Rabat: “It was even better than in Doha. We are still training through right now and trying to compete. We properly build up fatigue, but honestly it’s good and I felt better than in Doha. I am more focused and able to do better on the runway. Of course I would have loved to jump higher because training is going really well. But I had some really good jumps today and I am executing better than ever in competition. I will take that because it means that higher heights are waiting. There are so many variables and it takes some more competition rhythm to get back in to it. I will go home for the next few weeks because of how long the season is. I want to break it up, I will come back for Paris and probably London Diamond Leagues. We are gonna space it out, strategically. But I am excited to go back home and be with my puppy and husband”. [ in that order?]
Staten Island, New York, United States, photo by Kevin R. Morris
Katie has had a great career. The first championship I saw her in was the 2018 World Indoors when she was 5th behind Sandi Morris (4.95) Anzhelika Sidirova and Aikaterina Stefanidi, the three who dominated women’s pole-vault in that period. She was seventh in the 2019 Worlds with medals again going to Morris, Sidirova and Stefanidi.
The 2021 Olympics saw a change of the world order with Katie winning Olympic gold, followed by second in the 2022 World Indoors and first place in the World (outdoor) Championships. 2023 saw her joint World Champion with Nina Kennedy and then in the Paris Olympics another silver medal. She had become the dominant female vaulter.
Earlier this year she told me she was letting the future happen! “I am absolutely going through this year. The tentative goal is that I would love to be at a home Olympics (2028), but I just don’t know what my body will feel like. Basically, yes, I’d love to, but we’re just going to take it year by year and see how it goes. This sport is hard enough as it is. If you’re not enjoying it, at the core of it, then it’s too difficult to put yourself through everything. And I mean, that’s really not to sound cliché, but that’s why I started it when I was a kid. I just loved it. I thought it was the most fun thing ever. So I would love to come full circle and enjoy it at the end of my career.
Katie is now based in Tulsa, working full-time with her husband, Hugo. She is still coached by Brad Walker, but remotely. “I will work with Brad till I retire. So he’s still writing all my training plans. He’s still very much involved, but you get to a point in the pole vault where we’re no longer trying to reinvent the wheel. I’ve pretty much learned the bulk of what I can from him. And now I can do a lot more of it away from him and just fine-tune with him”.
Expect to see her on a few more podiums before she calls time.
