Eliza McCartney soared high to take pole vault silver at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow, after a gruesome injury to French athlete Margot Chevrier delayed the competition.
Chevrier suffered a serious injury to her left ankle and had to be taken away from the landing area on a stretcher before being transported to the hospital.
After the delay, McCartney had two vaults to strike gold at 4.90m only to agonisingly miss out on her final attempt.
For McCartney, it was the first international podium finish in six years since taking Commonwealth silver on the Gold Coast and a rich reward after years of injury frustration for the 27-year-old Aucklander.
The Kiwi has showed signs of returning to her best over the past 12 months or so, and today a 4.80m clearance earned her silver, only just missing out on the gold to her training partner Molly Caudery of Great Britain on countback. World and Olympic champion Katie Moon of the USA took bronze with 4.75m.
“It was just so awful for that to happen to someone,” McCartney said of Chevrier’s injury.
“It’s not that common, and for it to happen in a championship… poor Margot. I don’t even know what to say, to be honest. But this is what happens sometimes in sport and you have to stay in the game. You’ve got to stay calm and collected and get yourself back to a place where you can jump.
“Yes, the delay was hard, but [I was] just training with the other girls and trying to stay positive. When she was wheeled off she looked okay, so we could just get back into it. It’s tough having that happen, but you’ve just got to stay in the zone, and I just got back into the fact I was jumping and enjoying it and just tried to stick with that.
“I hope she’s recovering well and that all is well, but that’s not great, obviously.”
McCartney opened her competition with a comfortable first-time clearance at 4.55m before suffering a minor mishap at 4.65m, striking the bar in her first effort before rediscovering her co-ordinates to fly clear with her second crack – some 18.7cm over the bar, according to World Athletics stats.
The Kiwi seized control of the competition at 4.75m as the only athlete in the field to soar clear at this height with her first attempt, a height only three other women – Caudery, Moon and Angelica Moser of Switzerland – managed to negotiate.
The next height of 4.80m saw the end of both Moon, who has been struggling with an Achilles injury, and Moser as the battle for gold became a straight shootout between the 2016 Rio Olympic bronze medallist McCartney and Caudery.
However, the destiny of the gold medal at 4.80m shifted to the Briton, who shares the same coach, Scott Simpson, as McCartney. While the world leader and home favourite managed to wriggle over 4.80m with her second effort, it required a third-time clearance for McCartney to achieve the same feat, which put Caudery’s nose in front on the countback rule.
Both missed on their first attempts at 4.85m, after which McCartney opted to forgo her final two attempts and instead raise the bar to 4.90m. While Caudery wasn’t able to clear 4.85m, McCartney missed on her two attempts at 4.90m and took the silver medal.
“It’s been a long time since I was in contention for these things. It’s also been a really long time since I was looking at those sorts of heights. I knew I was on form, but so were a lot of women going into this competition.
“I didn’t really have much expectation, so I feel like in some ways it hasn’t really sunk in. I’m just really stoked to have been a part of what was a really neat competition.
“The crowd was amazing. I got to look at four-nineties again, which I haven’t done in years, and now I’ve got this medal, which is a bit random, but so I’m just I’m so happy about it.”