She almost lost a finger, now she’s our pole vault queen
Caudery vows to keep raising bar as she goes for gold in Glasgow
MOLLY Caudery is a worldleading polevaulter, star baker, amateur surfer and an Instagram influencer. But she wants to set the record straight about something she is not.
‘Just to clarify, no, I am not actually a model,’ laughs the 23-year- old about false reports she has a side hustle outside of athletics. ‘There was one article that posted something. But that is not actually something I do. It’s a little rumour that I should put to bed!’
The only time you will catch Caudery on a runway, then, is in an athletics stadium with pole in hand. The rising British star is, though, now on the books of a major clothing brand.
‘At the beginning of this year I signed with adidas,’ says Caudery. ‘ Before that, I never had a kit deal, so that’s been a huge help and opened up my eyes to what being an athlete can be. It’s so exciting for me to be a part of it all now.’
Caudery’s new sponsorship deal came off the back of her fifth place at last year’s World Championships in Budapest. Adidas will also, no doubt, have taken note of the Cornish athlete’s 200,000 followers on Instagram, where she combines reels of her training with snaps of her on holiday.
‘I don’t know where it really came from,’ says Caudery of her huge social media profile. ‘More recently, I’ve been posting a lot of pole vault videos and I’m getting like 10,000 more followers just from that.
‘I think having that following is super important. People have said that athletics is not quite as big as it used to be. So if I can inspire one person from the next generation, let alone the 200,000 or so who follow me, to be a part of athletics and keep it going, then that would be great.’
Caudery will certainly inspire many more if she continues to raise the bar as she has been doing. After finishing fifth in Budapest with what was then a lifetime best vault of 4.75metres, she won the UK Indoor Championships in Birmingham earlier this month with 4.85. Last weekend in France, she added another centimetre to her world- leading mark, meaning she goes into this weekend’s World Indoor Championships in Glasgow as favourite for gold.
‘To go from my PB being 4.60 at the beginning of last year to 4.86 already this year, it’s all happened very quickly for me,’ she says.
‘I took so much confidence from last year and I’ve improved physically and mentally and I think that’s just taken me to the next step.
‘Coming into the season, a world indoors medal was not a clear target. But now I can’t shy away from the fact that I’ve been consistently jumping 4.80. If I can keep doing what I’m doing, a medal could be on the cards and that’s exciting.’ Not only is a medal on the cards in Glasgow, it is also now a very real possibility in Paris. At the Olympics in Tokyo, Caudery’s British team-mate and Loughborough training partner Holly Bradshaw claimed bronze with 4.85. The gold was won with 4.90, Bradshaw’s current British record and a height Caudery looks capable of scaling.
‘It’s every athlete’s dream to get an Olympic medal,’ she says. ‘If I can just get to the final in Paris then you never know what is going to happen.
‘Every athlete has their timeline and mine was always 2028. But I know that what I’ve jumped so far could be pushing towards those medal areas, so I do think I need to re-evaluate. It’s crazy to think that that could put me up there.’ It is even crazier considering she nearly lost her finger in December 2021 following an accident in her home gym.
‘I was doing snatching and, as I brought the bar down, my finger caught between where you rack it and the bar,’ she recalls, showing off the scar on her index finger. ‘It was 90 per cent off. It was holding on by the skin on the side.
‘Three surgeries later, it is all good. But since then, I had two achilles surgeries, which put me out for almost nine months. That was a pretty big setback that I managed to come back from.’
A self- confessed ‘ adrenaline junkie’, Caudery has had to curb some of other passions to avoid further injury issues.
‘I don’t want to be doing anything too crazy in an Olympic year,’ she says. ‘I love going home to Cornwall, being in the sea and surfing. And I used to love skydiving, which I’m not able to do at the minute, but I will pick up when I am done with my career.’
Caudery’s other hobby does, at least, carry fewer risks. ‘Cooking and baking,’ she adds. Her signature? ‘Any big tiered cake.’
A medal in Glasgow will certainly be the cherry on top.