The 2024 Olympic Trials women’s pole vault competition begins today at 5:48pm Pacific with the qualifying round!
I will be there with the live tweets: https://twitter.com/polevaultpower/status/1806769829871022311
Live results: https://results.usatf.org
Dedicated stream: Peacock
Height progression: 4.20/4.35/4.50/4.55/4.60
Top 12 qualify to finals.
Unlike the men, the women are unlikely to need to jump all five heights to reduce the field to 12, I have a feeling clearing 4.50 today will be enough to advance.
The favorites to advance to the finals are the women who are in contention to make the team, so let’s take a look at where that stands:
The Olympic standard for the pole vault is 4.73m and right now only Katie Moon, Sandi Morris and Bridget Williams have the standard. But we currently have five women who are in the rankings quota and could possibly qualify that way…
The field size for the Olympics is 32 and currently only 12 vaulters have the standard, leaving room for quite a few to qualify through the rankings. Rankings here refer to the rankings on the “Road to” website, not the overall world rankings.
Emily Grove and Hana Moll are ranked about 18th at the moment. Gabi Leon is ranked about 19th. It is basically impossible that these athletes would fall out of the rankings quota as this is the last weekend for any new marks to count.
Chloe Timberg is ranked about 27th and Brynn King is ranked about 30th, but a top 3 finish here is going to improve their ranking, if they manage to place top 3 and not hit the standard, they should make it in on the rankings.
To evaluate the next few vaulters and their rankings, let’s do a quick breakdown on the scoring. In a hypothetical scenario where someone who does not have the standard gets 3rd with 4.68, this would be worth 1170 points for the mark and 70 points for the place = 1240 points.
Kristen Leland is ranked about 34th at the moment, placing 3rd with 4.68 would move her up as high as 30th.
Riley Felts and Rachel Baxter are ranked about 36th, placing 3rd with 4.68 would also move them as high as 30th, but that is obviously a tenuous position as other athletes could move higher or achieve the standard and bump them down.
Everyone else is too far down to be likely to move into the rankings quota, they would need to jump 4.73m and place top 3 to make the team.
Today is just the qualifying round, the vaulters above are some of the favorites to advance to the finals but anyone in the field has a chance to make the team if they advance to finals + place top 3 + jump at least 4.73.
