Caudery targets Olympic medal in breakthrough year

Molly Caudery leads the 2024 world rankings

Team GB's newest athletics star Molly Caudery is not mincing her words when it comes to Paris Olympics ambitions.

"There's definitely a big part of me now that, if things go to plan, I know that I can get a medal," she said.

As the 24-year-old pole vaulter prepares for this weekend's UK Athletics Championships, she knows that barring something unforeseen she will be heading to the Games in France in July.

Caudery posted a world-leading height of 4.92m last week - a mark that also broke the British record and was the seventh-highest of all time.

It comes in a year that has seen her crowned world indoor champion and win a European outdoor bronze medal.

And while she has described 2024 as a "whirlwind", it has led her to change her targets drastically since the winter.

"I've had to reset my mind just to kind of adjust to where I am and reset my goals," she told BBC Radio Cornwall.

"This year I just wanted to make the Olympic team, I just wanted to go to the World Indoors and I wasn't really thinking about getting medals.

"But now it's not like that, I would love to go to the Olympics and get a medal."

Caudery has been on the radar for quite some time - she was the youngest member of the England athletics team at the 2018 Commonwealth Games before going on to win her first major medal four years later when she got silver for England in Birmingham.

She spent almost two years as part of the University of Miami's athletics team before the Covid-19 pandemic saw her come back home and train at Loughborough University, where she really began to improve.

But even with those improvements, she still felt that her main Olympic chance would be in Los Angeles rather than Paris this summer.

"I always said that LA 2028 was my real goal," Caudery said.

"Paris would have been kind of just a tester - go there, get the experience and then really set the goals for LA.

"But I've got to play the hand I'm dealt, which is very good at the minute, and had to re-evaluate my goals and set them for Paris now.

"But there's so many more years to come and more opportunities to come, which is extremely exciting."

Molly Caudery first picked up a pole in her native Cornwall as a child

The Cornwall-born athlete is also quick to praise her family and friends from home for their involvement in her development.

Her father was a decathlete and her first coach, while her mother and brother both pole vault.

She first picked up a pole at the Carn Brea athletics track in Redruth, and those experiences as a child have shaped the athlete that she is today.

"I wouldn't say we had the best facilities in the world, but I think it makes you stronger as a person," Caudery said.

"The wind and the rain, we'd train through it all and that's really helped me now.

"I don't really get too worried when there's bad conditions, so that's perfect."

And with a world-leading athlete going into the Olympics, there is every chance that Caudery can bring a medal back to the track and the people that made her in less than two months' time.