‘Addictive, beautiful’ pole vault flying high in Kiwi sport after Eliza McCartney lit the fuse

Sunday, 21 June 2026

“I truly love pole vault. When you get off the ground, you genuinely reach flow state and you’re flying. It’s the best feeling in the world. And you just crave it. It’s addictive. It’s beautiful.” – Imogen Ayris

Imogen Ayris was 15, and still wrapping her head round the formative years of her athletics experience, when Eliza McCartney lit the fuse on the explosion of pole vaulting into the New Zealand sporting consciousness at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.

It was a seminal moment for vaulting in particular and athletics in general as this heart-on-her-sleeve, vivacious 19-year-old from Auckland leapt her way to a surprise, and historic, bronze medal with a first-time 4.80-metre clearance that immediately captured the hearts and minds of the watching Kiwi public. The unrestrained elation of this teen tyro achieving on the highest stage combined with the beauty and majesty of this challenging discipline struck a chord that is still reverberating now, a decade on.

Pole vault in New Zealand has never quite been the same since, culminating in a quintet of Kiwis heading to the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow (July 23-August 2), comprising almost a quarter of the New Zealand athletics squad of 21.

It’s a long, long way from sporadic individual flash-points, such as Simon Poelman’s bronze in the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games, Paul Gibbons popping up at major events through the ‘90s and since exposed drug cheat ex-Russian Denis Petouchinski grabbing silver at the ‘98 Games in Kuala Lumpur.

What’s more, the trio of Kiwi women – McCartney, now 29, is joined by the 26-year-old Olivia McTaggart and a fast-maturing Ayris, 25, at the pointy end of their sport – all carry genuine medal contention hopes in what’s set to be a world-class field in Glasgow.

It is fair to say arguably the most technically demanding, but also aesthetically pleasing, discipline on the track and field run-sheet has well and truly come of age to become embedded in the New Zealand psyche. For that McCartney deserves a massive dollop of credit.

New Zealand’s fairytale figure of the Rio Games, McCartney remains at the forefront of Kiwi track and field, even though she’s never quite been able to recapture that lightning in the bottle since in a career bedevilled by injury. But Ayris, now nipping at the heels of her mentor and inspiration, recalls that fateful afternoon in Rio when she saw for herself that dreams do come true in sport.

“I was 15, in the squad, jumping like 3.80, which was a metre below what she was jumping,” recalls Ayris in a chat with the Star-Times mid-Games buildup, “It was just a whole different world to me. I couldn’t even comprehend that level of competition because I was so young and wasn’t in this world yet. I don’t think I appreciated at the time how impressive and crazy that was, because to me everything she did was crazy and impressive.

“I remember watching it, and going crazy when she got the bronze, but I don’t think I had an appreciation for how high the bar was, how young she was and how hard it is to put all that together in a major championship final.

“She definitely put New Zealand pole vaulting in the spotlight, and lit the fuse for what was to come.”

Athletics New Zealand high performance manager Scott Newman agrees. McCartney’s leap heard around Aotearoa suddenly raised awareness and interest in this highly technical pursuit. “It definitely lit the fuse,” he says. “There were two or three years beyond that where the numbers just kept coming in and interest was high. That lifted it to what it is now … a more high-profile event.”

Ayris recalls the Auckland training squad numbering a half-dozen when she first took up pole vaulting as a 13-year-old former gymnast and keen netballer who decided to get serious with her athletics. That peaked at around 30 in the post-2016 boom – a 500% growth spurt.

“After Eliza did what she did in 2016 it was crazy, and the volume of people wanting to start pole vault was absurd,” adds Ayris. “Even now it’s clear people know what it is, and show real interest in what we’re doing. When I started people didn’t really know what pole vaulting was. I think the exposure from the three of us doing what we do has helped.”

Put it this way, when McCartney won her second senior national title in Dunedin in 2016 by jumping a national record 4.80m there were two athletes in the field. Within a half-dozen years event entries had hit double-digits.

“It was all moment in time stuff,” adds Newman. “There was a capable coach (the since exiled Jeremy McColl, banned for 10 years around misconduct allegations), strong interest and a young squad who came through. And they continue to develop and grow as a group. We’re arguably one of the strongest nations in the world right now [on the women’s side].

“The nature of the event lends itself to it being sporadic, but what’s worked for us is we’ve created a really good base in Auckland with quality facilities at Millennium. It’s not too dissimilar to shot put. If you create a hub, invest in coaching expertise and get a squad going, the environment builds on itself.

“Initially we invested in growing a wider squad. Now we’ve got more focused and narrowed it right down (Ayris and McTaggart are now both based at Loughborough, England, coached under contract by Scott Simpson and Kate Rooney, respectively). But there’s still strong interest, and nationals these days are the biggest fields we’ve ever had.”

McColl’s fall from grace was a serious setback, but Newman believes they’ve pivoted to a system that works well. Simpson, with support from Rooney, essentially runs the elite programme, while Games-bound men’s vaulter James Steyn leads much of the coaching back in Auckland. “It was a really difficult moment in time where we had to transfer to a different coach,” says Newman. “But it’s worked out incredibly well. Scott is outstanding.”

Ayris is a prime example of a system working to produce quality. Her gymnastics background helped – McTaggart, too, came to pole vaulting from the tumbling sport and undoubtedly there’s a synergy with the technical aspects of the discipline – but it was her time toiling away in a squad with sound coaching and strong mentoring that saw her progress at a steady clip.

“I started athletics when I was 7, and loved the whole vibe,” she says. “I went away on my first proper team to the North Island secondary schools and came back thinking this is what I want to do, so I stopped gymnastics and went all-in on athletics.”

Long story short, she went in search of coaching to hone her raw talent, and connected with McColl who persuaded her to come to a vaulting session. “I absolutely loved it, and never left. My gymnastics and athletics background meant I picked it up fast. It was natural wanting to do something that scared me a little bit.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Ayris, who started chasing the standard-setting McCartney from so far back, has all but caught up, with Commonwealth Games and world indoors bronze medals to her name. This year she’s jumped a PB 4.81m (the same height McCartney cleared at nationals) – ‘26’s equal fourth best clearance worldwide – and has won five of six outdoor meets in her Games buildup.

One other aspect of this vertical pursuit deserves exploring. The poles. They’re very specialised, very personalised, very expensive (a full set runs about $15,000) and not very portable. Getting them from A to B and then on to C is sometimes as much of a challenge as soaring over a bar nearly five metres above ground zero.

Ayris typically takes eight poles to a competition, each close to 5 metres long. As you might imagine, getting them on planes is sometimes problematic. Air New Zealand won’t carry them at all, which limits options out of this country. It’s a constant scheduling issue for athletes and management alike.

“You’ve got to get to the airport three hours before just to make sure they get on the plane,” adds Ayris. “I do a manual inspection and make sure they get carried to where they need to go. You speak to the baggage-handers because I’m not getting on that plane unless my poles are. Then you get situations where they won’t take the poles … so we have to change flights.”

Ayris, like all her peers, has been through the gamut of experiences. Her poles have returned to point of origin without getting off the plane with her. She’s had to go without them when alternatives did not present. She’s faced some eye-watering surcharges.

But she does this sport because she adores it, with or without the hassles.

“I truly love pole vault,” says this soaring prospect. “I look forward to a pole vault training session as much as a competition. I would pole vault every day of the week if I could. When you get off the ground, you genuinely reach flow state and you’re flying. It’s the best feeling in the world. And you just crave it. It’s addictive. It’s beautiful.”

And right now it’s flying high for New Zealand athletics.