Eliza McCartney has served up a timely reminder of her form on the world stage, clearing 4.80 metres to finish second at the Gyulai Istvan Memorial in Budapest, one of the last big meets before she lines up at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
The New Zealander was beaten only on count-back by Australia’s Nina Kennedy at the National Athletics Centre on Tuesday, the same venue that staged the 2023 world championships. Both women cleared 4.80 metres, but Kennedy had fewer failures along the way and took the win. It was the narrowest of margins between two vaulters who have pushed each other hard across the trans-Tasman rivalry for years.
The Gyulai Istvan Memorial sits at the gold tier of the World Athletics Continental Tour, one rung below the Diamond League and a step up from the ordinary circuit meet. That status matters. It means McCartney was measuring herself against a genuinely deep field rather than padding her season with a soft result, and 4.80 metres in that company is a serious mark just over a week out from a major Games.
For McCartney the height carried extra weight because it landed just one centimetre shy of her best jump of the season. She cleared 4.81 metres to win her national title in Auckland back in March, and Budapest showed she is holding that level deep into a long northern hemisphere campaign rather than fading from it. Consistency at close to a personal peak is exactly what a vaulter wants heading into a Games, where a single clean attempt at the right height can be the difference between a medal and fourth place.
She was not the only New Zealander in the field. Olivia McTaggart finished fourth with a clearance of 4.61 metres, another useful outing for a vaulter who will also wear the silver fern in Glasgow. The pair, along with Imogen Ayris, make up one of the strongest women’s pole vault groups New Zealand has ever sent to a major Games, a small squad with a realistic collective shot at the podium.
Kennedy remains the woman to beat across the region and beyond. The Australian improved the Oceanian record to 4.95 metres in Monaco earlier in the season, taking a mark McCartney herself once held, and she arrives at Glasgow as one of the favourites for gold. On this evidence McCartney is close enough to make the final a contest rather than a procession.
The result caps a 2026 that has quietly become one of the best seasons of McCartney’s career, which is no small thing given how it started. The 29-year-old burst onto the scene as a teenager, taking bronze at the Rio Olympics in 2016 at the age of 19 and briefly looking like the next great name in the event. The years since were anything but smooth. A long run of injuries repeatedly interrupted her progress and at times threatened to end her career altogether, and each comeback carried the quiet risk that the body would not hold.
This year the body has held. McCartney has strung together a run of strong results without a serious setback, and the pattern of her season tells the story of an athlete peaking on schedule. She took silver at the Paris Diamond League meet in June with a best of 4.70 metres, then went a full ten centimetres higher in Budapest against a similar level of opposition. Athletes and coaches talk about timing a run to a major Games, and McCartney’s numbers are trending in the right direction at exactly the right moment.
The men’s vault in Budapest was headlined by Sweden’s Mondo Duplantis, the world record holder who set his 13th record of 6.29 metres at last year’s edition of the same meet. His presence, along with a clutch of six-metre men, is a measure of how highly the Gyulai Memorial rates on the calendar and how strong the field was that McCartney competed in.
Attention now turns to Scotland. The Glasgow Commonwealth Games run from 23 July to 2 August, with the athletics programme staged at the Scotstoun Sports Campus from 27 July to 1 August. McCartney goes in as a three-time Olympian and a former Commonwealth silver medallist, having finished second at the Gold Coast Games in 2018, and she is part of a 21-strong New Zealand athletics team that also features distance runner Geordie Beamish chasing a double.
A slimmed-down Commonwealth field without some of the very biggest European names could open the door for a New Zealand vaulter to reach the podium, and McCartney arrives with as much confidence as she has carried into a major event in years. Budapest was not a win, but for an athlete who has spent so long fighting her way back to the top, a clearance of 4.80 metres against the best in the region, decided only on count-back, is the kind of near miss that tends to sharpen the appetite rather than dull it.
Glasgow will tell us how far that form can carry her. On the evidence of Budapest, McCartney is arriving in Scotland in the right shape at the right time.
Will Eliza McCartney and the New Zealand vaulters reach the podium in Glasgow? Have your say 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 π
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