Great Britain’s Molly Caudery continued her ascent when she added a centimetre to her own world lead by clearing 4.86m at the Perche Elite Tour Rouen meeting in France late on Saturday night (25).
Her performance, which will propel her into the role of being the gold medal favourite at next week’s World Athletics Indoor Championships on home soil in Glasgow, brought a fitting end to the World Athletics Indoor Tour in Europe with the Silver meeting playing out a capacity crowd at the Kindarena in the Normandy capital.
The 2021 European U23 silver medallist opened her evening at 4.53m and cleared comfortably first time. She ran into difficulties at her next height and needed all three attempts to make it over 4.63m but found her rhythm again at 4.73m and again cleared that height at the first time of asking.
The bar went up to 4.80m and Caudery had a first time failure as the two remaining women, Finland’s reigning European champion indoors and out Wilma Murto and USA’s Bridget Williams both cleared with their first attempts; but Caudery had the confidence to pass up to the next height of 4.86m and went over impressively with her first attempt before failing three times at what would have been an absolute British record of 4.91m.
Caudery becomes the sixth best European women's pole vaulter ever, either indoors or out, and moves up to 10th place on the world indoor all-time.
Another world lead! 🌍 @MollyCaudery flies over 4.86m on her first attempt for victory at the @PercheEliteTour in Rouen!#WorldIndoorTour pic.twitter.com/SwuPVYjBUt
— European Athletics (@EuroAthletics) February 24, 2024
The Briton puts down her success and impfessive improvement this indoor season after having started 2024 with a best of 4.75m set outdoors when she finished fifth at last summer’s World Athletics Championships – she improved her personal best to 4.83m in another French meeting Val-de-Reuil on 28 January before going over the previous world lead of 4.85m at the British Championships in Birmingham a week ago – to several months of injury-free training after the outdoor season.
“The finger injury happened on Christmas Eve [2021] and that was such a disappointing one as I was in really good shape then. I almost chopped my finger off and I was out for three months. It happened when I caught my finger between the rack and bar in the gym. Having three surgeries on that was just a bit of nightmare but I stayed positive and worked on my weaknesses, which helped in the long run.
“I had a good Commonwealth Games and European Championships in 2022 but had some Achilles pain in the season so had surgery in September and that was a six-month rehab. Then I got back to training but had the same pain, so had another surgery in March, which was a shorter recovery of six weeks.
“This winter, I’ve not only been able to carry over the confidence from the World Championships but also focus on things like speed work. In the world final I felt slightly out of place in Budapest, but I think I’m slowly starting to say to myself that ‘this is where I belong’. That’s a really nice feeling."
Cuadery now has her sights on Holly Bradshaw’s British records of 4.90m outdoors and 4.87m indoors, which date from 2021 and 2012 respectively.
Coincidence, she shares a coach, Scott Simpson, with the Tokyo Olympic Games medallist, and he was in Rouen encouraging Caudery throughout from the sidelines.
Neither Murto nor Williams went any higher than 4.80m in Rouen, finishing second and third respectively although Murto she didn’t actually try another height despite the fact that she could have had a tilt at a Finnish indoor record after clearing 4-81m in January.
USA’s two-time former world champion Sam Kendricks won the men’s competition with 5.93m with France’s Thibaut Collet unable to find the form that took him over a personal best of 5.92m on Thursday night in Clermont Ferrand and having to settle for being the best European in fifth place with 5.73m.
Phil Minshull for European Athletics