The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
MEN’S TRACK AND FIELD
US pole vaulter races to get to Tokyo to replace teammate KO’d by COVID
TOKYO — U.S. pole vaulter Matt Ludwig got the call at about 11 p.m. ET Wednesday. Sam Kendricks had tested positive for COVID-19 and was out of the Tokyo Olympics. And Ludwig, the alternate, was in.
“You have a flight in about 8 hours,” Ludwig’s manager told him.
The 25-year-old Ludwig was in the middle of a move, packing up the stuff in his Akron, Ohio apartment. “I had some different stresses going on,” he said, “but then immediately all that changed.” He drove to the University of Akron to pick up his poles at 4 a.m., then was off to the Cleveland airport to catch a 7:45 p.m. flight to Tokyo.
From there, Ludwig said, it was all a bit of a blur. He landed at 4 p.m. local time in Tokyo on Friday and got to his room in the Olympic Village at 10 p.m. He grabbed a snack, got seven hours of sleep and tried his best to prepare for the opening round of Olympic pole vault competition, which started at 9:40 a.m. on Saturday.
“I didn’t have a uniform until an hour before the bus left this morning,” he said.
Less than 18 hours after he landed in Tokyo, Ludwig managed to clear the first two bars in preliminary competition, including one set at a height of a little more than 18 feet, but failed to qualify for the final. It had been about 48 hours since he found out he would get to compete at the Olympics. And just like that, it was over.
“It was of course a very fast, up-anddown roller coaster of emotions, without making it to the final in a few days,” Ludwig said. “But it’s an exciting step in my career and something that’s definitely been life-changing.”
As the fourth-place finisher at last month’s Olympic trials, Ludwig knew he would need to be ready at a moment’s notice in case one of the three qualifiers – Kendricks, Chris Nilsen and KC Lightfoot – was unable to compete.
But after the qualifying trio had landed in Tokyo and gone through a practice round earlier this week, Ludwig pretty much thought that was it. He had shifted his focus to an upcoming meet in Poland on Aug. 15, and started thinking about what he thought would be his next Olympic opportunity, in Paris in 2024.
“Not that you’re giving up hope, but you’re sort of like ‘OK, wish them luck, they’re going to do great,” “he said. “I would never have expected a call probably 36 hours before competition that says ‘hey, you need to get across the world right now.’ “
It’s the sort of whirlwind that minorleague baseball players experience when they are called up to the big leagues in a pinch. Except this one involved a 13-hour flight, and a convoluted set of COVID-19 protocols to navigate.
“Being an alternate, he had to pretend like he was going in terms of the protocols, taking tests,” Akron track and field coach Dennis Mitchell told The Akron Beacon Journal. “So if they needed to call him up at a moment’s notice, he was ready – which is exactly what happened.”