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At the age of only 17 years, Sydney Rothman of Paarl Girls’ High School is ranked the number 3 u-18 pole vaulter in the world.
Sydney recently participated internationally in Europe, reaching the phenomenal height of 4,11 m at the Apeldoorn Invitational indoor athletics championships in the Netherlands.
And on home ground recently at Dal Josaphat Stadium in Paarl, at the Prestige Athletics, Sydney cleared the current record of 3,70 m and jumped a massive 4,03 m
With these massive pole-vault jumps, she is also the first schoolgirl in Africa in history to clear the 4 m height in Africa.
With this she has qualified for the 2024 Junior World Champs which takes place in Peru later this year.
Sydney has always been a keen athlete, and four years ago while watching pole-vault athletes of Louis Nienaber practising she thought it may be fun to try her hand at this.
She joined Louis’ Boland Pole-vault Academy and immediately got hooked on the sport.
Last year she won her events at the SA Schools and SA Seniors athletics champs.
Sydney now practises with coach JP van As at the Stellenbosch Pole-vaulting Academy. She says she practises two to three hours a day, which includes high-performance training, running and biometrix.
Ultimately she is setting her sights on the Olympic games in future. To qualify for this she needs to clear a height of 4,75 m, which she is continuously working towards.
And, says Sydney, if all goes well she would like to think that she will be able to participate in two or three Olympics in the pole-vaulting event in future, hopefully winning a podium position or perhaps even breaking world records.
