For McCartney, in particular, a refresh is essential. I was really close, stayed on for about a second, gave me some hope and then crushed it.”īoth will now take breaks before returning for a big 2022 season that will include potential shots at both the world indoor and outdoor championships and the Commonwealth Games. “My last jump was one of the best I’ve done … I just wish I’d maybe done it a little earlier. “The fact we both had an opportunity to be that close to qualifying is exciting, but it makes not getting it a little bit worse. Sport is tough and it’s emotional and I was just happy to be out there with Eliza going for those heights and giving it everything,” she told Stuff. “I feel like I’ve had that moment a few times this season, when I snapped my pole and a few other things. McTaggart, too, felt the emotions unfurl at the end and had to be consoled by her support crew. On her third she got the height, but just clipped the bar on her way down and watched in agony as it teetered and then fell to also extinguish her Olympic hopes. The 21-year-old, who had to shake off a fractured hand suffered in March when a pole snapped on her and then an ankle injury, got over 4.30m comfortably at her second attempt and then had three fairly decent shots at 4.50m – just 5cm off her PB. But at 4.50 she had a first-up misfire, could not even get off the ground on her second crack and was well off on her final roll of the dice. She came in at 4.30m, and only got things together on her final attempt to clear the bar. McCartney never got any rhythm going in this last-chance event. I would have always thought, ‘what if, what if’?” I would have regretted it if I had stopped any sooner. “I wanted to feel like I’d given it everything I had. I knew the qualifying period ends in a couple of days, and I didn’t want to stop before then. It’s because it’s not over until it’s over. I wanted to stop a number of times in the last six months but something makes you just keep going. Every year that goes past it makes it a lot harder because you haven’t competed in so long, haven’t felt those feelings, haven’t been on the long runups, the right poles, and when you’re out of rhythm it makes it a lot harder to get back into it. “The last time I felt at my best was in 2018 … I just haven’t been able to do that since. Her debilitating condition just has not allowed her to either train or compete at anything resembling her best. The truth is McCartney is a shadow of the pole vaulter she was from 2016 to 2018 when she soared to the very top echelons of her sport. When the runway mechanics aren’t quite right, it’s pretty hard to get it right in the air after that.” “I felt like 4.50 was something I could have done today which was good and bad, because I didn’t do it. But I did manage to get one height in there. “When it’s like that I tend to be guessing quite a bit and it’s not conducive to a really great jump. “It was a battle internally as well, just because every runup is slightly different, and sometimes I make a step and it just hurts too much to carry on. “That was really tough, just to get down the runway,” McCartney told Stuff after taking some time to compose herself. McCartney gritted her teeth and tried hard, as did McTaggart who came awfully close to clearing 4.50m on her final attempt, but in the end the circumstances were just too much to shake off. You could see it on Saturday as she struggled to even complete her shortened runup, let alone launch herself up and over the heights required. That’s a long time to carry the proverbial weight on your shoulders She says it’s 2018 – when she cleared her PB of 4.94m in Germany – when she last felt unencumbered. Now she doesn’t even get the chance to go back and have another crack at catching lightning in a bottle.Ī big part of that is the chronic Achilles tendon problem that has pretty much forced her to compete with the handbrake on for the last three years. For McCartney, in particular, it was a gut-wrenching outcome.įive years ago she had won a fairytale bronze medal as a 19-year-old rookie sensation at the Rio Games. The 24-year-old Aucklander, alongside national squadmate Olivia McTaggart, had her final crack on Saturday at making it to the Tokyo Olympics in the last of three straight winter series pole vault meets at the AUT Millennium indoor facility.īoth had to clear 4.70 metres to nail an add-on spot at the Tokyo Games, and both failed at 4.50m as the realities of tough, disrupted buildups came home to haunt them. Eliza McCartney’s Olympic dream was over and the emotions were just too much to contain. The shoulders sagged, the reality hit and the tears came flowing out.
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