Skeleton Medalist Takes Up Pole Vaulting

[rainbowgirl28]

This is a pretty old article... does anyone know how she ended up doing?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/sport ... 867672.stm

Skeleton medallist takes up pole vault!


Updated 11 March 2002, 21.37

Pole vaulting

Winter Olympics bronze medallist Alex Coomber is to swap her tea-tray for a pole.

It's not some crazy new sport, but Coomber's attempt to be the first woman to take part in both winter and summer Olympic games.

Coomber won her bronze for Britain in the 2002 Salt Lake games in the scary and dangerous sport, the skeleton.

It was Britain's first individual medal in the games for eight years.

She's now aiming to qualify for the British women's athletics pole-vaulting team for the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, her spokesman said.

Apparently the medallist was looking for something to do during the summer months!

The spokesman said: "They are very similar disciplines (bobsleigh/pole vault) ... you are running very quickly at the start and then you do something."

She used to compete in the high jump and long jump as an amateur, but never the pole vault.

Women's vaulting has only recently become an Olympic event.

Let's hope she leaves the tray at home!

[flying scotsman]

From what i heard she had one or two sessions and realised that she had maybe under estimated how hard it is and that the lame justification that it's similar to skeleton because you run fast at first then do something at the end wasn't really good enough !