| Personal information | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Matthew Joseph Ludwig | ||||||||||||||
| Born | July 5, 1996 | ||||||||||||||
| Home town | Chardon, Ohio, U.S. | ||||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||||
| Country |  United States | ||||||||||||||
| Sport | Athletics | ||||||||||||||
| Event |  Pole vault | ||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Matthew Joseph "Matt" Ludwig (born July 5, 1996) is an American pole vaulter. [1]
Ludwig is a native of Ohio. He attended the University of Missouri before transferring to the University of Akron where he graduated in 2019 with a degree in biomedical engineering. [2]
Ludwig was originally an alternate on the three-man U.S. Olympic pole vault team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but subsequently competed as an Olympian after bronze medalist and reigning world champion Sam Kendricks tested positive for COVID-19 and was declared out of the Tokyo Games. [2] [3]
Pole vaulting, also known as pole jumping, is a track and field event in which an athlete uses a long and flexible pole, usually made from fiberglass or carbon fiber, as an aid to jump over a bar. Pole jumping was already practiced by the ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks and the ancient Irish people, although modern pole vaulting, an athletic contest where height is measured, was first established by the German teacher Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths in the 1790s. It has been a full medal event at the Olympic Games since 1896 for men and since 2000 for women.
Stacy Renée Mikaelson known as Stacy Renée Dragila is a former American pole vaulter. She is an Olympic gold medalist and a multiple-time world champion.
Jeff Hartwig is an American pole vaulter.
Jennifer Lynn Suhr is an American former pole vaulter. She has been an Olympic and World champion, has been ranked #1 in the World, has been the #1 American pole vaulter since 2006, and has won a total of 17 US National Championships. She holds the world indoor pole vault record at 5.03 m. She holds the American women's pole vault record indoors. In 2008, she won the U.S. Olympic trials, setting an American record of 4.92 m and won a silver medal in the Beijing Olympics. She won the gold medal at the London Olympics on August 6, 2012. Track & Field News named her American Female Athlete of the Year for 2008.
John Thomas Pennel was an American pole vaulter, and four-time world record holder.
Jack Bryan Whitt is an American pole vaulter. His personal best jump indoors is 5.72 m, achieved in June 2012 in Tulsa, OK. His best outdoor jump of 5.70 m came in May 2013 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He represented the United States at the 2013 World Championships in Athletics in Moscow.
Stephen Norwood Smith was an American Olympic pole vaulter. He was the first person to clear the 18 foot barrier indoors. He was the number one ranked pole vaulter in the world in 1973.
Alysha Eveline Newman is a Canadian track and field athlete who specializes in the pole vault. She is 2024 Summer Olympics bronze medallist and 2018 Commonwealth Games champion, and holds both the Canadian national and Commonwealth Games records in the women's pole vault. Newman represented Canada at the 2016, 2020, and 2024 Summer Olympics, where she won a bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics. This marked her as the first Canadian woman to medal in pole vaulting at the Olympics. Her vault of 4.85 meters also set a new Canadian national record.
Mark Hollis is an American track and field athlete who competes in the pole vault. His personal best for the event is 5.83 m, set in 2014. He finished third at the 2014 IAAF Continental Cup.
The men's pole vault competition at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The event was held at the Olympic Stadium between 13–15 August. Thirty-one athletes from 16 nations competed. Thiago Braz of Brazil won the gold medal, the nation's first medal in the men's pole vault. Renaud Lavillenie of France was unable to successfully defend his 2012 gold, but became the seventh man to win two medals with silver this time. Sam Kendricks's bronze returned the United States to the podium after a one-Games absence.
Samuel Hathorn Kendricks is an American pole vaulter. He is a three-time indoor and six-time outdoor national champion (2014–2019), the 2016 Olympics bronze and 2024 Olympics silver medalist, and the 2017 and 2019 World Champion. In 2019, Kendricks set the American pole vault record at 6.06 m, tying him with Steve Hooker for fourth all time. He later won the gold medal at the World Championships in Doha.
Armand "Mondo" Duplantis is a Swedish-American pole vaulter who is regarded as the greatest pole vaulter of all time. Duplantis is the world outdoor and indoor record holder. He is a two-time Olympic champion, two-time World outdoor and indoor champion, and the current European champion.
Allison Rebecca Stokke Fowler is an American track and field athlete and fitness model. She broke a number of American records for high school pole vaulting. Images of her at age seventeen were widely shared on the Internet, resulting in her becoming an internet phenomenon.
Kathryn Elizabeth Moon is an American pole vaulter. She won gold medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, 2022 and 2023 World Athletics Championships, and silver medals at the 2022 World Indoor Championships and the 2024 Summer Olympics. Moon was also the 2019 Pan American Games silver medalist.
Scott Houston is an American track and field athlete who competes in the pole vault. He was the American national indoor champion in 2018. He competed collegiately for both the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Indiana Hoosiers. Houston has also coached collegiate pole vaulters.
Christopher Nilsen is an American athlete specialising in pole vault and high jump. He won the silver medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the pole vault event with a jump of 5.97 m.
The United States of America (USA), represented by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC), competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Originally scheduled to take place in the summer of 2020, the Games were postponed to July 23 to August 8, 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. athletes have appeared in every Summer Olympic Games of the modern era, with the exception of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which the U.S. boycotted in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The opening ceremony flag-bearers for the United States were baseball player Eddy Alvarez and basketball player Sue Bird. Javelin thrower Kara Winger was the flag-bearer for the closing ceremony. For the third consecutive time in the Summer Olympics, the United States was represented by more female than male athletes.
The men's pole vault event at the 2020 Summer Olympics took place between 31 July and 3 August 2021 at the Japan National Stadium. 29 athletes from 18 nations competed. Armand Duplantis of Sweden won gold, with Christopher Nilsen of the United States earning silver and Thiago Braz of Brazil taking bronze. It was Sweden's first victory in the event and first medal of any color in the men's pole vault since 1952. Braz, who had won in 2016, became the ninth man to earn multiple medals in the pole vault.
KC Lightfoot is an American pole vaulter. He holds the American record with a clearance of 6.07 m at the Music City Track Carnival in Nashville on June 2, 2023. This broke the record of 6.06 set by Sam Kendricks, the 2017 and 2019 World champion, in 2019. Lightfoot now ranks fourth on the world all-time list behind American Swede Mondo Duplantis, Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie and Ukrainian Sergey Bubka. He placed fourth at the 2020 Summer Olympics.
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