![]() “It was the hardest I have had to work for a medal, 4.90m and 4.95m on third attempts. "It was a battle,” the new world indoor champion reflected. Morris had two failures but then coolly waited for the final track event, the men’s 60m final, to run its course, before rumbling down the runway and taking the vault that took her to gold – matching the silver medal winning clearance in Portland two years ago that put her third on the all-time indoor list. Sidorova could venture no higher, with three misses at 4.95m. ![]() The momentum was with the 25-year-old US vaulter. Morris, with her pass, also entered last chance saloon after one failure but again showed her bottle with a last gasp success. She needed a third attempt to clear the bar. Then, at 4.85m, Sidorova sailed over first time and Morris and Stefanidi both passed after first time misses.Īt 4.90m, two blanks from Stefanidi left her with bronze. Morris and Stefanidi both dug deep to nail third attempts at 4.80m. McCartney dropped out of the medal hunt too, her three misses consigning her to fourth. Nageotte departed, after two failures, finishing fifth. Sidorova, faultless at 4.60m and 4.70m, elected to pass at 4.75m and the former European indoor and outdoor champion regained the box seat with a first time clearance at 4.80m. Morris, who needed two attempts at 4.70m, cleared first time – as did Olympic bronze medallist Eliza McCartney, the New Zealander setting an area indoor record. Only six women remained in contention with her when the bar was raised to 4.75m.Ĭanada’s Alysha Newman bowed out at that height with three failures, while Stefanidi required a second attempt to succeed and world leader Katie Nageotte, who had earlier failed first time at 4.50m and 4.70m, rolled the dice and passed to 4.80m after dislodging the bar with her opening attempt. Stefanidi sat out the first hour and a quarter, entering the competition with a first-time success at 4.70m. In a competition that dramatically seed and sawed, Stefanidi – on an unbeaten run of 19 finals – had to settle for bronze, with neutral athlete Anzhelika Sidorova taking silver. She did so in style, breaking Suhr’s championship record with a 4.95m clearance and taking three shots, all unsuccessful, at 5.04m, two centimetres higher than Suhr’s world indoor record. ![]() Runner-up in the previous three global finals – to US team-mate Jenn Suhr at the 2016 World Indoor Championships in Portland, and to Stefanidi at the 2016 Olympics in Rio and last year’s outdoor World Championships in London – silver Sandi finally stepped up a grade to top spot. Instead, as the compelling drama unfolded over three and quarter hours, the entirety of the Saturday evening session, it was Sandi Morris, the US bridesmaid of the women’s vault, who rose to the big occasion and seized her chance to wed herself to gold. The 28-year-old might have come to Birmingham as the Greek with the Midas vaulting touch – on a roll of European outdoor, Olympic, European indoor, and world indoor titles – but, when it came to the world indoor final, the one gold missing from her Fort Knox collection proved beyond her grasp once again. Still the wait goes on for Katerina Stefanidi.
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