The shoulders sagged, the reality hit and the tears came flowing out. Eliza McCartney’s Olympic dream was over and the emotions were just too much to contain.
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.
Both 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. For McCartney, in particular, it was a gut-wrenching outcome.
Five years ago she had won a fairytale bronze medal as a 19-year-old rookie sensation at the Rio Games. Now she doesn’t even get the chance to go back and have another crack at catching lightning in a bottle.
A 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. She says it’s 2018 – when she cleared her PB of 4.94m in Germany – when she last felt unencumbered. That’s a long time to carry the proverbial weight on your shoulders
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. 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.
“That was really tough, just to get down the runway,” McCartney told Stuff after taking some time to compose herself. “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.
“When it’s like that I tend to be guessing quite a bit and it’s not conducive to a really great jump. But I did manage to get one height in there.
“I felt like 4.50 was something I could have done today which was good and bad, because I didn’t do it. Each run was just quite a struggle. When the runway mechanics aren’t quite right, it’s pretty hard to get it right in the air after that.”
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. Her debilitating condition just has not allowed her to either train or compete at anything resembling her best.
“The last time I felt at my best was in 2018 … I just haven’t been able to do that since. 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.
