Alysha Newman reacts after a successful vault during the women's pole vault final on day twelve of the Olympic Games on Aug. 7 in Paris.Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
Alysha Newman has always said that she wanted to be the first Canadian woman to win an Olympic medal in pole vault. She made that happen on Wednesday in Paris with the jump of her life, a Canadian record and a bronze medal.
Newman cleared 4.85 metres, to finish third behind Nina Kennedy of Australia, who jumped 4.90 metres for gold, and Katie Moon of the United States, who took silver also at 4.85 metres.
This is Newman’s third Olympics and the first two left largely bad memories. She finished 17th at the 2016 Games and couldn’t clear the bar at all in Tokyo, sending her into a downward spiral, both physically and emotionally, that lasted for years.
The poor performance in Japan, and the lingering effects of a concussion she’d suffered just before those Games from a freak accident, left her with crippling anxiety and looking for comfort in a bottle.
She thought about quitting athletics about 20 times, but then she found a neurologist and learned how to control her fears.
She slowly made her way back to the sport, but the journey wasn’t straightforward. Until this week she hadn’t made a pole vault final in five years, and she lost three months of this season to an ankle injury. Last fall she switched to a new brand of poles, a risky move in an event in which familiarity and routine can make all the difference.
She went to Paris with new-found confidence, and joy. “Heading into this Games, I felt like I was stronger than ever, mentally tough,” said the 30-year-old.
And when the flickers of anxiety rose up inside, she thought about what her father once said. “I always remember when I was a little girl and I was doing gymnastics, my dad said, ‘When you’re nervous and you have butterflies in your stomach, that means you’re ready.’”
She made the final with ease on Monday, and on Wednesday she cleared 4.85 metres on her second attempt, eclipsing her own Canadian record of 4.83. And she came ever so close to topping 4.90.
Throughout the competition, as the bar kept going higher, she didn’t worry like she used to about every detail. Instead, she just pulled a new pole from her bag and blasted down the runway.
“It was really fun, because I just kept challenging myself with a fresh pole that had no heaviness, no trauma, no breaks, no injuries,” she said. “I felt light out there. I felt like a feather.”
During the wait between jumps she took out a notebook and next to each height she wrote just one word: courage. “I just kept saying, ‘Have courage. Have courage. Have courage.’ And for some reason that word this year has been so powerful to my heart and to my veins. And it worked. Everything worked,” she said.
Even when she missed at 4.90, she leaped off the mat smiling. “I laughed, because I’m like, dang it, you’re so close. And you just smile, and it’s laugh, and you laugh because the next jump, you’re a better jumper.”
Having never won a medal before, or even come close, she didn’t know what to do when it was clear that she’d placed third, but the others still had jumps left. “It’s funny because you have to still sit there and wait until the other girls are done. So, I’m, like, awkwardly standing there. What do I do? Do I celebrate? Do I kiss everyone? Do I cry? It was a really surreal moment,” she said.
When she could finally celebrate, she briefly pretended to have a leg injury, a nod to those darker times and a chance to laugh at herself.
She’s got a few more meets left in the season and then it’s back to training and, for once, enjoying where she is in the sport. She hopes to use her medal to expand pole vaulting in Canada, and maybe even open an athletics facility.
“I want to do some more stuff in the sport, and this bronze medal is going to help. And I think my dreams are bigger than medals,” she said.
Those black days in Tokyo seem a long time ago.