Nina is one of eight track and field Aussies with a strong chance to win gold in the 2024 Paris Olympics

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Paris is the one other city aside from London to host the Olympics thrice and all eyes are on the estimated $10 billion production. But that’s not the only thing that the world is waiting with bated breath for.

There are over ten thousand athletes competing in this year’s Olympics and fans are dying to see who will be coming out on top, with predictions and debates flourishing hotly over forums and social media.

Out of all the sports, there is a select handful that generally draws more attention, such as tennis, football, gymnastics, and track and field.

There is something exciting as audiences watch these Olympic athletes seem to challenge the very fabric of our human existence by pushing their physical limits in ways that the average person could not even dream of achieving.

Track and field is the very pinnacle of this as people run, jump, and throw, at unbelievable speeds and distances. It is also a relatively simple sport to follow, unlike gymnastics or basketball where you need to have a basic understanding of the game in order to understand what’s going on.

But we cannot discount the hard-core fans of track and field, where people follow specific athletes, inspired by their steadfastness and ability to push the very envelope of human capacity.

Related article: Which Aussies will bag gold at the Paris 2024 Olympics?

Born to stand out from an early age

Nina is one such individual. Born in 1997 in a little-known town called Busselton in Western Australia, she would rise through the ranks and find herself vying for gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Nina Kennedy started pole vaulting at the tender age of 12, after joining Perry Lakes Little Athletics. Her early start in pole vaulting was largely due to the raw talent that she demonstrated during her first year in the Australian activity program designed for children between the ages of 3 and 16. A pole vaulting coach discovered her potential and Nina has not slowed down ever since.

At 14 she bagged her first win with a personal best during the Australian pole vault championships. She will go on to break that 4.10m record and set a new outdoor record for herself in 2023 at the Zurich Diamond League. The 4.91m record is also the current women’s pole vault national record in Australia.

Nina Kennedy’s trajectory and growing penchant for gold

It was in 2015 when Nina broke out globally and started to represent her home country. Her first appearance was in Donetsk, Ukraine, for the World Youth Championships where she placed 5th. The following year at the World Junior Championships in Oregon, US, Nina placed 4th.

The year after that, she failed to qualify for the Beijing World Championships and also no heighted in the 2016 IAAF World U20 Championships. It seems that she battled a series of setbacks, especially after a quad injury forced her to withdraw from competing in the London IAAF World Championships. But these three setbacks were designed to make her stronger than ever and she returned with a thirst to prove herself in 2018.

After placing 8th at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham, UK, Nina won bronze at the Australian Commonwealth Games. Both times, she achieved a stellar record of 4.60m. Though, Kennedy shares that the Australian Commonwealth Games bronze medal was one of her biggest accomplishments as she had only two vault sessions following an injury just six weeks prior to the competition.

During the pandemic, Nina took the time to educate herself on recovery, going so far as to enrol herself into sleep class to ensure that she was maximising her recovery potential every night when she closed her eyes.

She also learnt more about nutrition, changing up her diet so that she could improve herself. However, despite saying that the pandemic was a blessing in disguise, Nina still struggled when it came time to get back out there.

At the Japan Olympics, the world was coming out of lockdown and Nina’s performance was impacted by the entire thing, which felt surreal, bizarre, and, distressing to say the least. In her own words, Nina recalled that it “took such a mental toll. I was very, very close to pulling out.

That would have been the easier thing to do.” But like any champion, she went to the empty stadium and cleared 4.40m. Though it was a far cry from what she could do, Nina shares that it was the best that she could do at that point in time as even showing up had been a colossal act of bravery, “The fact that I even got out there and I was standing on the runway was a sigh of relief.”

However, looking at her recent performance, Nina has secured three golds in 2024 alone. First, her victorious kickoff at the Strive Special Program in Perth early this year, followed by the Australian Championships in Adelaide, and most recently, the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku, Finland.

Will she be able to bag her fourth gold at the upcoming Paris games? Fans are making predictions and My Betting Sites are gearing up for an exciting season.

Other track and field Aussies competing for gold

There are no shortages of talent from Australia, with Jemima Montag, competing in race walking, Ash Moloney, a decathlete, both slated for gold.

The top contender for high jump is Nicola Olyslagers, the current world champion. Just one year older than Nina Kennedy, Nicola is also a shining beacon of Australian sportsmanship, alongside Patterson, another high jump star from down under.

Over at the javelin throw event, Kelsey-Lee Barber, a two-time world champion and Commonwealth Games gold medallist, is looking forward to the Olympic season. Unlike Nina, who got a head start in her discipline early in life, Kelsey only discovered javelin at 17, though she quickly earned her first medal at 22.

Being the only woman in the Southern Hemisphere to win a World Championship gold, the odds of her taking home gold this year seems very much to be in her favour, though Australians are not discounting Mackenzie Little, another javelin thrower, who has consistently achieved gold since her first game in 2016.

Currently, Nina is primed as the strongest contender for bringing home gold in pole vaulting for 2024 Olympics, and her male counterpart, Kurtis Marschall, who is the same age as Nina, will also be vying for the gold in male pole vaulting.

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