You can buy a lot of snake food for $150,000!
The women’s pole vault was an epic event. So much so that I felt that any track action was an unwelcome interruption.
It was been an intriguing year for women’s pole vault. Katie Moon has been World Champion three times (2022, 2023 and 2025) and Olympic champion in 2021, but this year she has only cleared 4,80 once. Nina Kennedy (2024 Olympic Champion and joint World Champion in 2023 with Moon) jumped 4.95 and won in Monaco and Rabat, but then got injured. Molly Caudery won the World Indoors and the Golden Gala in Rome and then got injured. Angelica Moser won the Paris Diamond League. The new girl on the block, Hana Moll, won three Diamond Leagues – Zurich and Lausanne, as well as the Diamond League final in Brussels. All that set up the Ultimate very nicely.
All eight competitors cleared 4.70, but at that height we lost Emily Grove, Katie Moon and Tina Sutej. The New Zealanders Eliza McCartney and Imogen Ayris cleared 4.80 but no higher. Sandi Morris, in fifth place after two failures at 4.80, made a brave decision to pass at 4.85 and save her energy for later jumps. “I decided to risk it for the biscuit,” she said. “All I needed to do was that same jump at 4.90m, so I waited, gathered my energy, and I knew I had the height. I was like, ‘Forget 4.85m, that’s not going to win, so I’m going to jump 4.90m.’ I had to battle really hard for that title.”
Moll and Moser both cleared 4.85m on the first attempt, while McCartney and Ayris couldn’t, and Morris, Moll and Moser all failed their first attempts at 4.90m. Morris cleared 4.90 to move into the lead. Moll cleared 4.90 on her third attempt, a height just 1cm below the PR she had achieved to win the Diamond League title last week.
When Moll failed three times at 4.95 – and Morris twice – Morris knew that she was the winner on countback and took her final attempt at 5.00 – unsuccessfully.
According to the World Athletics website, Morris, who had won two world indoor titles, an Olympic silver and four world outdoor silvers, now has her first global outdoor title. It was a great performance and no one deserves it more that Sandi Morris – but is an invitational event with only eight athletes really a “Global title”.
Hana Moll said of the new event. “It is a lot less taxing not to have to do a preliminary round before the final. I think that is one of the reasons why we saw so many high bars because everyone was fresh and ready.” Your correspondent’s view was that the fast-moving nature, with the next vaulter at the back of the runway waiting as the previous one vaulted, made for a fast-moving event.
Sandi Morris summed up her emotions: “I think I have given my husband Tyrone approximately 32 heart attacks over the course of my career, so I’m glad that tonight I won. I finally jumped high enough to take the win, and it was enough because sometimes you give it your all and it is not enough. Sometimes you get out-jumped or you finish second on misses, which has happened to me a few times in my career. I gave it all; I jumped 4.90m, and this is my first time back in the 4.90s in six years. I also did it earlier this season at the USA Championships, and I thought, ‘all right, it is there’. I just have to dial it in and become more consistent over 4.90m. I really wanted to get a look at five meters tonight, but I felt I was out of gas.
“I think a lot of people expect that once you reach a certain age [she is 34], this is when you’re supposed to retire, but they never find out what they could have continued to do in those years. I had a couple of rough seasons, but I felt like there was something more I could still tap into. I am really glad I was right and didn’t give up. I am out there competing against athletes who are 10 years younger than me or even more. It is crazy, but I think it is really special when you see generations overlap. I also get to witness the sport evolve, including something like this Ultimate Championship. I have been doing this for 10 years; I have two World Indoor gold medals, but all of my outdoor medals at this level have been silver. Tonight I have the honor of becoming an outdoor champion, and I’m excited about the future.”
If the strange headline puzzles you, it is a reference to Sandi Morris’s collection of reptiles.
Editor’s note: Here is a Stuart Weir story on Sandi Morris and her love of reptiles: https://www.runblogrun.com/2017/09/considering-sandi-morris-stuart-weir-writes-on-the-wc-and-olympic-silver-medalist.html?utm_source=gemini
Story 5/11 by Stuart Weir on The WA Ultimate Championships!
