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 competitions were known to the Mycenaean Greeks, Minoan Greeks and Celts. It has been a full medal event at the Olympic Games since 1896 for men and since 2000 for women.
The World Athletics Championships are a biennial athletics competition organized by World Athletics. Alongside the Olympic Games, they represent the highest level championships of senior international outdoor athletics competition for track and field athletics globally, including marathon running and race walking. Separate World Championships are held by World Athletics for certain other outdoor events, including cross-country running and half-marathon, as well as indoor and age-group championships.
Sergey Nazarovych Bubka is a Ukrainian former pole vaulter. He represented the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. Bubka was twice named Athlete of the Year by Track & Field News, and in 2012 was one of 24 athletes inducted as inaugural members of the International Association of Athletics Federations Hall of Fame.
The World Athletics Indoor Championships are a biennial indoor track and field competition served as the global championship for that version of the sport. Organised by the World Athletics, the competition was inaugurated as the World Indoor Games in 1985 in Paris, France and were subsequently renamed to IAAF World Indoor Championships in 1987. The current name was adapted with the name change of the sports governing body in 2019.
The first world record in the women's pole vault was recognised by the International Association of Athletics Federations in 1994. The inaugural record, 4.05 metres by Sun Caiyun of China set in 1992, was the world's best mark as of December 31, 1994.
The first world record in the men's pole vault was recognized by the International Association of Athletics Federations in 1912.
The African Championships in Athletics is a continental athletics event organized by the Confederation of African Athletics (CAA), the continental association for the sport in Africa. Since its inaugural edition in 1979 it was at first organised intermittently with nine editions held in fourteen years until 1993. Following the tenth edition in 1996 it has been organised biennially on even years, and is always held in the same year as the Summer Olympics. The 21st edition was held in Asaba, Nigeria in August 2018.
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.
Yarisley Silva Rodríguez is a Cuban pole vaulter. She won the silver medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics – the first Latin American athlete to win an Olympic medal in that event.
Renaud Lavillenie is a French pole vaulter. Lavillenie won the gold medal at the 2012 Olympics in London and the silver medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. In addition to his Olympic success, he has won three World Indoor Championships gold medals (record), three European Championships gold medals and four European Indoor Championships gold medals. He has also won one silver medal and four bronze medals at the World Championships. As of 25 August 2016, he holds the French national records for the highest pole vault clearance both outdoors and indoors. The 6.16 was the absolute world record for the pole vault for over six years, 2014–2020. He was the pole vault overall winner of the IAAF Diamond League in seven consecutive years, from 2010 to 2016.
The pole vault at the Summer Olympics is grouped among the four track and field jumping events held at the multi-sport event. The men's pole vault has been present on the Olympic athletics programme since the first Summer Olympics in 1896. The women's event is one of the latest additions to the programme, first being contested at the 2000 Summer Olympics – along with the addition of the hammer throw, this brought the women's field event programme to parity with the men's.
The Balkan Athletics Indoor Championships, also known as the Balkan Indoor Games, is an annual international regional indoor track and field competition between athletes from the Balkans. Following a test event in 1991, it was officially launched in 1994. Organised by the Association of the Balkan Athletics Federations (ABAF), it is typically held in February. The competition complemented the long-running annual outdoor track and field tournament: the Balkan Games.
The 2015 IAAF Diamond League was the sixth season of the annual series of outdoor track and field meetings, organised by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). It consisted of fourteen one-day meetings, starting on 15 May in Doha, Qatar, and ending on 11 September in Brussels, Belgium. Other events were held in Shanghai, Eugene, Rome, Birmingham, Oslo, New York City, Paris, Lausanne, Fontvieille, Monaco, London, Stockholm, and Zürich. All previous venues remained on the tour, with the exception that London returned to host the second meeting in the United Kingdom, having been replaced by Glasgow during the 2014 IAAF Diamond League.
Sam Kendricks is an American pole vaulter. He is a three-time indoor and six-time outdoor national champion (2014–2019), the 2016 Olympics bronze 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 Gustav "Mondo" Duplantis is a Swedish-American pole vaulter, the current world outdoor and indoor record holder, the current Olympic and two time World outdoor and one-time indoor champion, the current European champion, and the current Diamond League champion. He won the silver medal at the 2019 World Championships. Duplantis is a two-time European champion from 2018, when he set current world under-20 record, and from 2022. Indoors, he is 2022 World Indoor Championship and 2021 European Indoor Championship gold medallist.
Sandi Morris is an American pole vault record holder. She won the silver medal in the pole vault event at the 2016 Summer Olympics. She also won silver at the pole vault event at the 2017 World Championships in Athletics and another silver at the 2019 World Championships in Athletics. In 2018 she won gold at the World Indoor Championships. Morris has a personal best vault of 4.95 m indoor, set on March 12, 2016, in Portland, Oregon. She matched this height at the 2018 World Indoor Champships when setting a new championship record. July 23, 2016, Morris cleared 4.93 m at American Track League in Houston at Rice University breaking Jennifer Suhr's American outdoor record in the pole vault. Morris cleared 5.00 m at 2016 IAAF Diamond League Memorial Van Damme in Brussels on September 9, 2016, to set the U.S. women's outdoor pole vault record.
The World Athletics Indoor Tour, formerly the IAAF World Indoor Tour, is an annual series of indoor track and field meetings, held since 2016. It was designed to create a Diamond League-style circuit for indoor track and field events, to raise the profile of indoor track and field, and replaced the IAAF Indoor Permit Meetings series.
Norway competed at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar, from 27 September to 6 October 2019.
Armand Duplantis (SWE)
Katie Nageotte (USA)
