Australian pole vault champion Nina Kennedy displayed grace and sportsmanship at the World Athletics Championships in the women’s world pole vault final after a gruelling two-and-a-half hour contest, when she asked her final competitor, US pole vaulting champion Katie Moon, “Hey girl, you maybe wanna share this?”
The pair had been jumping for “such a long time”, Kennedy said after the event, and “pushing each other to the absolute limit.”
Kennedy had already broken two national records, clearing 4.85m and 4.90m to secure a silver medal.
She had to keep competing against Moon if she wanted that gold.
But then the former Commonwealth Games gold medalist and her competitor, a Tokyo Olympics gold medalist, was given a choice by the officials: they could keep jumping — (called a “jump-off”) continuing their attempt at clearing 4.95m before the bar was dropped to 4.90m to find a clear winner— or they could both decide to share the gold medal.
“Katie is the world champion, she is the Olympic gold medallist, I didn’t think she would want to share it,” Kennedy said after the event. “I thought we might need to keep jumping. But I kind of looked at her and said ‘Hey girl, you maybe wanna share this?’, and the relief, you could see it on her face, and you could see it on my face, and it was mutual.”
“I said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? Yes? OK’, so we did it … I was like, ‘Girl, are you sure? You’re the bloody GOAT [greatest of all time], are you sure?’.”
“My legs were cramping, I had never done a competition so long and so intense before, and she felt exactly the same, so we were so happy to stop,” she continued.
“It took us a while to decide and all the cameras were around us and the officials were around us, but you could see the relief in our faces.”
Kennedy told reporters she was reminded of the occasion in 2021, when Qatari athlete Mutaz Essa Barshim and Italian Gianmarco Tamberi became the first pair to share a gold medal at the high jump finals at the Tokyo Olympics, when the new rules to allow competitors the opportunity to split the medal was first introduced.
Kennedy is now now equal ninth on the Top Ten all-time Pole Vaulters list.