Every season there is a flood of ambitious young athletes who take up track and field and harbor the hopes of becoming an accomplished runner, jumper or thrower. A significant number of those young, dedicated, ambitious athletes improve their skills and develop a love for the oldest of all sports. But only a very small percentage successfully rise to the pinnacle of their event. Katie Moon – Olympic gold medalist and two-time World Championship gold medalist in the pole vault - is one of those special athletes.

Moon was one of those youthful track and field beginners. At Olmsted Falls, Ohio, Katie was a level 4 gymnast through age 9 and a diver on the swim team. By the time of her graduation, she had sufficiently honed pole vault skills that allowed her to set an Ohio state high school record at 3.97m/13’0”. She was on her way. After a brief stint at the University of Dayton, Katie simply took off at Ashland University, winning two NCAA Division II titles.

After college, Katie initially launched off on her own – a tough go for any track and field athlete. “Having jumped high enough to qualify for US nationals my senior year in college showed me ‘Ok, I can keep going with this’, but there is no roadmap where exactly you go from here. And I think that happens with a lot of track and field athletes.” Moon took time to show why development of nascent track and field athletes is so different. “In other sports it is very obvious. You have the draft. You either go in the draft or you don’t. That kind of makes it clear where you go and what you do. Pole vault and track and field in general is just not quite as cut and dried.” But Katie found her way to acquire leadership that would refine her skills. “It felt a little like I was floating around for a bit. But I ended up figuring it out.”

Before long, Katie connected with Brad Walker, a two-time World Championship gold medalist in the pole vault and one of the very best vault coaches. Aided by Walker’s tutelage, Moon soon enhanced her vaulting, her precision improved, and her confidence grew. But when did she know she could become a world class vaulter? “It is hard to pinpoint one moment but I think it was when I first started trying it out and working with Brad.” Upon her initial session, Coach Walker spotted and corrected an awkward method Moon had been using with her lower arm. “Brad on Day One was able to help me get that; it felt like my jump, and I just knew in that moment that this guy is going to get me where I want to be. And I think finally working with him I had a roadmap of how I knew I could be great. Obviously, you never know how things are going to go. But I just knew that things were going to click. I always felt that I had potential and that this is how we’re going see that potential through. And when I jumped that 90 bar for the first time at indoor nationals in 2018 it was a huge breakthrough. The first time I worked with Brad I just knew that something was going to be different and that this was the place I needed to be.

“Brad and I work together remotely,” explains Katie, now a long-standing, established Nike athlete. “That was always part of the plan to do what we could together. But eventually if you are away and a coach is doing his job well in theory you should be able to continue what you’ve learned from him or her and you don’t need to rely on them.” The duo continues to be a coach/athlete relationship that works quite well. “I will work with Brad until I retire,” smiles Katie. “There is no other coach for me.”

Katie has a team that works well for her, that allows her to build on her role as one of the all-time best pole vaulters without sacrificing her all-important family life. “If nothing else happens in my career, I am so happy with it. But obviously, I am not retiring. I am very much still going. I just don’t want to sacrifice being away from my family anymore, my husband (Hugo Moon). I’d like to think that we can continue on and that I don’t have to appeal to Brad constantly to accomplish what we want to accomplish.”

In a span of about four years, Moon has assembled an eye-popping pole vault performance record: 2021 Olympic gold; 2024 Olympic silver; two outdoor World Championship gold medals [’22 & ‘23]; and two indoor World Championship medals [’22 & 24] – one silver and one bronze. Her personal best clearances (4.94m indoors and 4.95m outdoors) rank her #5 on the all-time list (#1Russia’s Yelena Isinbaeva; #2 USA’s Jenn Surr; #3 Russia’s Anzhelika Sidorova; and #4 USA’s Sandy Morris) and have Katie knocking on the door of the highly-touted Five Meter Club. “I know that I am running out of time,” notes the 33-year-old vaulter at the same time. “I try not to put too much pressure about that on me because at the end of the day if I were to never clear 5 meters I know I would still walk away from the sport feeling pretty darn fulfilled.”

But Moon reveals that she does think about the 5.00m clearance. “It’s definitely still something that motivates me. I know I’d loved to start taking shots. I’ve done it before and I would love to start taking shots again at the American record and maybe the world record. I think if I am able to put together a good season this coming year I am so very capable.” Katie admits that she was stimulated by the Paris Games. “I really felt glory at the Olympics this year. I felt fantastic and I felt like - had the standard not broken - we all could have jumped a little bit higher. I felt like I was very capable of jumping 19.00m that day.” And with a smile she adds, “And the next bar is the 5 meter bar! It very much motivates me. It is something I am thinking about seriously. I want to get the most out of me the next few years of my career.” The vault master knows what needs to be done. “The name of the game is just staying healthy. So you want to stay healthy, stay motivated, and enjoy it. And I want to give that 5 meter bar a run for its money.”

In the 2023 Budapest World Championship Katie got caught up in a most peculiar situation in the women’s pole vault finals. After a spirited and exhausting series of vaults, Katie and Australia’s Nina Kennedy found themselves in a gold medal tie with each athlete clearing a world-leading 4.90m/16’¾”. In accordance with a rule change of 15 years ago, athletes currently involved in a 1st place tie can agree to not have a jump-off and instead agree to “share” 1st place gold medals. 1st place athletes Moon and Kennedy entered into such an agreement and each was awarded gold medals. The victorious duo was happy with the shared result. But some others were not. “There was a lot of negativities that came from a “loud minority,” noted Moon. “People just wanted to be mean or saying something nasty. We had our fair share of negative comments - that we gave up, that we were losers - by people who don’t know the pole vault or how hard it is,” revealed Moon who outlined the final sequence of the championship event. “I was exhausted at that point by long, drawn-out jumps. We were out there for hours. The competition had ended and we just decided that we didn’t want to jump anymore.” Moon described those final moments. “I was at a point in the competition when you are on the stiffest poles, jumping at your highest bar. You have to be 100%, firing on all cylinders, to land safely in the pit. I could feel myself not catching the bend of the pole because I just wasn’t putting the same energy into it.” The co-champions received many inquiries about the shared gold medals. “We were receiving a lot of positive feedback but the initial negative comments prompted me to post a story that just kind of explained why we did what we did. At the end of the day, I don’t really care if people disagreed with us. I actually have a lot of respect for people that will say things like ‘I wish they’d kept going’ or ‘I wish the rule had made them keep jumping because that was such an awesome competition’ that were still respectful of us.”

Earlier this year, followers of Moon could sense that something was akilter, “I had Achilles tendinosis that I was battling throughout the entire season. I had a specific injection but unfortunately it didn’t do what it needed to do. It was a real shame. There was no damage to it and I wasn’t in danger of rupturing it. But when it is painful enough it distracts you to the point that where you can’t accomplish what you need to.” But Katie soldiered on. “Last year was really the first time that I was calm and relaxed. You could see that the entire year for the most part was a really great year. And this year I was so hoping that I’d be running with that. But my foot was aching, it was so frustrating. Because the issue was my take-off foot I started protecting it. I wasn’t jumping all the way through. It was a huge year and mentally I felt great. And mentally I didn’t know how it was going to end.” But Katie found a way. “It got to the point where the foot and the pain was manageable. And that was really all we could ask for. I really haven’t done anything for about 4 weeks. I feel great. But I really won’t know until I start training and start running on it again.”

In 2025 a World Championship gathering will take place in Japan. And Katie Moon is well-positioned with a guaranteed entry for the September event. “Because I won in Budapest, I have the automatic qualifier for Tokyo,” notes Moon who will return to the site where she captured gold in the 2021 Olympics. “I am very excited about going back to Tokyo. It is so nice that I don’t have to stress about Trials.”

Looking back, Katie Moon is grateful for the success she has earned. “Gosh, it has been an amazing few years. I am able to say I have medaled at every major championship since 2021,” offers Katie humbly. “I’m just very grateful. It is nice to know that all the hard work and the sacrifice have been worth it.”

And what about the future? Like any good pole vaulter, Moon is always several jumps ahead. And while she can readily continue vaulting for a good number of years, Moon has already given some thought about life after track and field and the various roadmaps she could follow. “I really like public speaking; And I really like commentating when I’ve gotten to do it a couple of times. Getting away from the sport, I love fashion. I can definitely see something in that realm. And I like coaching. I have a general idea of the things that I like and we’ll just kind of see what develops. I have been so fortunate with this career. And I really want to figure out what it is I want to do and what I’ll be happiest doing. We’ll see.” And many track and field fans will be watching as well. / Dave Hunter /