Eliza McCartney has timed her run to perfection, clearing 4.70 metres to take the silver medal in the women’s pole vault at the Paris Diamond League meet, a result that leaves New Zealand’s most decorated vaulter peaking at exactly the right moment with the Commonwealth Games now less than four weeks away.
McCartney was edged for the win by Swiss vaulter Angelica Moser, who cleared 4.77m at the Stade Charléty. The fight for the rest of the podium came down to the finest of margins. McCartney, Moser and Australia’s Nina Kennedy all topped out at the same heights through the competition, and McCartney’s cleaner card pushed Kennedy down to third on a countback. In a discipline where a single first-time clearance can decide a medal, that small advantage was the difference between silver and bronze.
It is the kind of result that says plenty about where McCartney is heading. The 29-year-old has already gone higher this season, clearing 4.81m earlier in the year, so a winning bar in the high 4.70s was well within reach on a better night. What matters more is the consistency. Pole vault is a brutal event for momentum, and stringing together strong competitions against the best in the world is exactly the form an athlete wants to find in the lead-up to a major championship rather than after it.
McCartney remains the face of New Zealand pole vaulting, and the standard the rest are chasing. She won bronze at the Rio Olympics in 2016 at the age of 19, becoming the youngest Olympic medallist in the history of the women’s event, and two years later she cleared 4.94m at a street vault in Germany to set New Zealand and Oceania records that still stand today. The years since have been anything but smooth, with a long run of injuries that repeatedly interrupted her progress and at times threatened her career. Seeing her back on a Diamond League podium, trading clearances with the world’s best, is a reminder of just how good she is when her body lets her compete.
She was not the only New Zealander in the Paris field, and the depth on show was striking. Imogen Ayris finished seventh after a tougher night at the office. Ayris cleared 4.60m on her third attempt but could not get over 4.70m, a frustrating outing for a vaulter who soared to a career-best 4.81m earlier this month. That personal best matters more than one off night in Paris. It puts Ayris right in the conversation as a genuine medal threat in her own right, and gives New Zealand two vaulters capable of clearing heights that win major medals.
Olivia McTaggart rounded out the New Zealand contingent in eighth. She moved through the lower bars without trouble before bowing out at 4.60m. Three New Zealand women in the same elite international field is a remarkable position for a country of this size in an event as technical and unforgiving as the pole vault, and all three are now bound for the Commonwealth Games.
That strength in numbers is the real story here. New Zealand does not just have one world-class vaulter, it has a cluster of them pushing one another higher. McCartney sets the benchmark, Ayris has shown this month that she can match it on her day, and McTaggart adds further competition. When the Games roll around, the prospect of more than one New Zealand vaulter in the final is realistic rather than hopeful.
There was a less encouraging note elsewhere on the night for the New Zealand team. Javelin thrower Tori Moorby, who is also heading to the Commonwealth Games, finished tenth in Paris with a best throw of 55.89m, more than four metres down on her season best. Throwers are notoriously streaky and a single flat competition this far out is no cause for alarm, but Moorby will want to rediscover the distances she has already shown she is capable of before the Games arrive.
The Paris meet sits among the most prestigious one-day events in athletics, and the Diamond League circuit pulls together the strongest fields outside the world championships and the Olympics. For New Zealand athletes, competitions like this are far more than a chance to chase prize money or points. They are the sharpening stone, the place where you find out whether your form holds up against the people you will be facing when the medals are handed out. On that measure, McCartney’s silver is a genuinely positive signal.
The countback that decided silver and bronze is worth dwelling on, because it captures something about how this event rewards composure. Three athletes finished level on height, and the one who had missed fewest times along the way came out ahead. McCartney has been competing at the top for a decade now, and that experience showed in the way she kept her card clean when it counted. Against vaulters of Moser and Kennedy’s calibre, that is the difference between a good night and a great one.
Attention now turns firmly to the Commonwealth Games, where McCartney, Ayris and McTaggart will all line up. New Zealand fans have rarely had this much to be excited about in a single track and field discipline. With McCartney finding her rhythm, Ayris climbing to new heights and a full trio heading to the Games, the women’s pole vault is shaping up as one of the more promising medal prospects for the New Zealand team.
What do you make of New Zealand’s pole vault depth heading into the Commonwealth Games? Can McCartney add a Games medal to her collection, and is this the year Ayris breaks through? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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