Olympic gold medal in pole vault for former Flyer Nageotte
Katie Nageotte, who spent two years at the University of Dayton, holds the United States flag in celebration after winning the gold medal in pole vault. AP Photo/Martin Meissner
Taylor Robertson
Former Flyer, Katie Nageotte, won an unexpected Olympic gold medal in the pole vault on Thursday jumping 4.90m. Nageotte is now the third American woman to win gold in the vault along with Jenn Suhr and Stacy Draglia.
At the beginning of competition she was consistently missing bars. She clipped the bar on her first two attempts at 4.50m, coming extremely close to not clearing a single bar in the competition at all.
As any professional athlete would do, she shook off the first two failed attempts and got her head in the game. After Nageotte cleared her gold medal bar, she attempted to jump at 5.01m to snatch the U.S record. Unfortunately, she came up short due to the intense emotions she was feeling after realizing she had just won a gold medal.
Prior to Katie’s professional pole vault career, she spent her first year of college in 2010 at University of Dayton. As expected, she began making history at Dayton.
Katie won the indoor and outdoor Atlantic 10 Conference in the pole vault as a freshman. She then set out to be the first Dayton vaulter to compete at the NCAA’s with a jump of 12 feet 9.5 inches placing her seventeenth in the nation. Before Katie, no Dayton vaulter had made it past the NCAA regional competition.
As the saying goes, “Once a Flyer, always a Flyer.” The Dayton community is excited to see where Katie Nageotte’s career takes her from here.
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