2024 Olympics: How Eliza McCartney went from ‘absolute emptiness’ to a highlight in the Paris final

Eliza McCartney bids farewell to the public at the Paris Games.
Photo: Simon Stacpoole / www.photosport.nz

Eight years after her Olympic debut, Eliza McCartney returned to the Olympic arena in much the same way she left it: joyful, exuberant and awestruck.

When McCartney was introduced to another packed house at the Stade de France on Wednesday night ahead of the seventh night of the athletics program, she waved enthusiastically, wide-eyed, and skipped across the track to the pole vault pit.

While waiting for her turn to jump in a rather long women’s final, which extended the duration of the event by more than an hour, she danced around in the background, looking relaxed and free.

And when it was time to fly, McCartney took her position on the catwalk, stared at the bar towering above her and smiled.

There were tears afterwards when she finished sixth after failing three times at 4.80 metres – the height she had cleared in Rio to secure her bronze medal – but McCartney explained they were “tears of joy”.

“It took a lot to get to this point,” an emotional McCartney told the media after an extraordinary women’s final, which was won by Australia’s Nina Kennedy.

“It’s so special to have these opportunities… the fact that I can go out there and do my thing, express myself, pole vault, which is what I love to do. How lucky I am! I love it all.”

Eliza McCartney in action during the final.
Photo: photography sport

You would never have known from her excited energy that this was a sport that had caused McCartney so much grief.

Chronic injuries to his Achilles tendon and lower leg forced McCartney, who rose to stardom as a teenager at the 2016 Rio Olympics, to miss the postponed Tokyo Games.

She later described the feeling she had when she missed the last Olympics as “absolute emptiness”.

“It’s hard when you plan your whole life around it. It’s your job, it’s what you do for a living and a livelihood. It’s almost like you lose who you think you are when those moments happen. It can be a bit traumatic in a way,” she told RNZ after being named in the New Zealand track and field team for Paris.

But McCartney didn’t just miss the Tokyo Olympics. During a four-year hiatus from international competition, she sat out two world championships, one indoor world championship, four Diamond League finals and the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Highlight event after highlight event passed her by. And yet she kept on going.

Eliza McCartney grins after being selected for the New Zealand track and field team for the Paris Olympics.
Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly

She formed a new “team,” teaming up with biomechanist Matt Dallow and his wife, former NBA performance therapist Chelsea Lane. Together, they began the painstaking work of breaking down the deeply ingrained movement patterns that were aggravating her injuries, relearning the devil’s technical discipline from scratch.

“I literally had to learn to walk again,” McCartney said of that period.

More recently, following the departure of former national coach Jeremy McColl, who was given a 10-year ban for serious misconduct, McCartney and fellow New Zealand pole vaulters Olivia McTaggart and Imogen Ayris have come under the tutelage of British coach Scott Simpson.

McCartney said she has found in Simpson a coach who understands how to manage her “high maintenance needs.”

Even with the major adjustments to her schedule, there was no guarantee that McCartney would be fit enough to jump at the Paris Olympics.

‘Mānawatia te wā nei, tirohia te tawhiti o tōu haerenga’

Take in this moment and see how far you’ve come photo.twitter.com/kNZZoO4xz6

— The New Zealand Team (@TheNZTeam) August 8, 2024

The 27-year-old says she was able to go to the Games thanks to some “good decisions” over the past two months, but that her preparation was not optimal as a result.

“It was a very tough preparation, very different from my indoor season, which went very smoothly and beautifully,” she said.

“So if I’m in the final and finish sixth, that’s an absolute bonus for me.

“It’s been a bit tough lately and I think it showed. I didn’t have the preparation I wanted. My attempts at 4.80 just weren’t quite right, I think it showed I didn’t have the right run-in, but I really believe I gave it everything I could today.”

McCartney doesn’t know if she will ever return here, amid the electrifying atmosphere of the athletics finals at the Olympic Games.

She hopes to still be competing in her sport, a fascinating mix of strength, agility, technical precision and grace, at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in four years’ time, but she remains a contender who can compete in each event separately.

“I want to go to LA in four years, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. Why not just enjoy this moment, because it’s happening now and I get to be there.”

When McCartney finally decides that her body and mind have had enough, it will be moments like Wednesday night that will stay with her. That night, in the scorching atmosphere of an Olympic final, she found freedom. Soaring high, not worrying about where she might land.