From lockdown sessions in an underground car park, with a stick crowned by a tin of beans, to a momentous vault into the Tokyo night sky, the story of Holly Bradshaw has always been one of ups and downs.
The 29-year-old Blackburn pole vaulter won an Olympic bronze medal to end years of near-misses, self-doubt, a LinkedIn search for a sponsor and her master’s dissertation on the post-Olympic blues. Suffice it to say she thought it might never happen. “I was queen of fourth, fifth and sixth,” she said. “But finally I’ve done it.”
Her Olympic odyssey started when she was a rising star at London 2012. She finished sixth, but had jumped 12 centimetres above the gold-medal mark in January of that year. She thought medals were inevitable. That night she got engaged, summing up the yin and yang of sport.
There were so many close calls: fifth at Rio 2016, a truly galling sixth at the 2017 World Championships in London, when an average vault by her standards would have got her on to the podium, and fourth at the World Championships in 2019. The wait went on.
“The years leading to 2017 were really difficult,” she said. “I got myself in a really dark hole. I’d be on the edge, thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ Someone would jump really well in America and I’d be gutted. It would hurt me and I’d feel sick to my stomach. I didn’t like that in myself and I wanted to change that.”
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So when it all came together one night in Japan it felt like a triumph of perseverance. When Bradshaw cleared 4.85 metres it meant that Katerina Stefanidi, the defending Olympic champion, had a last chance. She failed, and Bradshaw had won Britain’s first pole vault medal at an Olympics. The only question that remained was: what colour would it be?
Gold ended up going to Katie Nageotte, the American, who has “Dad” inscribed inside her spikes as a tribute to the man who drove her all over Ohio in search of competitions before he died of a heart attack in 2007. She tapped her shoes together at the start and cleared 4.90m.
The other main challenger was Anzhelika Sidorova, the world champion from Russia. She matched Bradshaw’s height but had fewer failures earlier in the competition, so she won the silver on countback. Sidorova passed on her final attempt at 4.90m, which gave her a vault at gold, but she failed and cut a disconsolate figure as she puffed out her cheeks on the mat.
What a triumph for Bradshaw, though. She is so well versed in the flipside of sport that she has spent much of this year doing a master’s degree in sports psychology, with a focus on the post-Olympic blues. She has been working with psychology and mental health experts to create a mental toolkit to help athletes cope with the aftermath of the competition. “I’m doing my dissertation, but I need [to speak to] Olympic athletes who have come to Tokyo to do it,” she said. “When I get home I’ll be interviewing athletes on that.”
Bradshaw has always been an interesting figure. In 2016 she bristled when she saw the seating arrangement for the plane home from Rio. She said that after a series of injuries she felt her fifth place was a big achievement, but the gold medallists sat at the front of the plane, followed by silver and bronze-medal winners, with the rest at the back. “Even if I’d won a medal, I would not have enjoyed that experience,” she said.
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Always a team player, toiling away, flying high and yet often under the radar, she was the nearly woman, but quietly inspirational. In her early years she received lots of abuse on social media for competing while wearing a crop top that revealed what she called “puppy fat”, telling The Times: “I didn’t look like other pole vaulters and it caused a lot of lasting damage.”
There was more criticism when she just missed out on another medal, but she kept working away. Now she will relish her new-found status and said she will compete at the World Championships, European Championships and Commonwealth Games next year.
Last year was one of the hardest yet. Lockdown forced her and her coach, Scott Simpson, to be resourceful. They knew they could not lose months of training. They found big sticks and put a tin of beans on the top to simulate running with a pole. They built a gym in her garage in Loughborough. “I couldn’t pole vault for three months and had to train in my house, which isn’t very big,” she said. “Then I would be throwing a shot out in the field out the back. My neighbours thought I was crazy.”
Bradshaw has already achieved a lot. She has won bronze at the European Championships and was European indoor champion in 2013. By a quirk of geography she used to live close to Keely Hodgkinson, Britain’s other track and field medallist. “I was round the corner from Trev and Jen,” Bradshaw said, referring to Hodgkinson’s husband-and-wife coaching team. Now Bradshaw has moved on. And up.
