A Good Pole Model: Britain’s Kate Dennison

Kate Dennison: A Good Pole Model from The Sunday Times

Kate Dennison will be 28 by the time of the Olympic Games in London in 2012, but it was not until last week that she staked her claim as a genuine contender. During an obscure meeting in Prague that few in the athletics world knew she was even attending, the pole vaulter from Staffordshire entered the history books. “It was cool,” she says of a clearance of 4.51m that secured the British record. “But it was, ‘Right, what’s next?’ ”

Four days later and it is lunchtime at Loughborough University in Leicestershire. Across the way from the student union building, and attached to the side of a track made famous by Sebastian Coe and Paula Radcliffe, among others, is one of the best indoor training centres in the world. Dennison comes bounding in. She suggests we sit on a high jump mat to chat. She was a gymnast as a teenager and now has shown the ambition, determination and talent to put Britain on the map in an event in which we have never made any kind of an impact at world level.

Why? “I’m not sure,” she says. “Everyone regarded what Janine [Whitlock, the old record-holder] achieved as something quite special but you have to look beyond that. Maybe that was my problem for a while. Janine jumped 4.47m. It is no longer good enough and neither is 4.51m, but now that I have jumped higher, I can look towards girls in the rest of the world and not limit myself to simply being the best pole vaulter in Britain.”

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