![]() Of course, I have these thoughts in my head, but I focus on the goals that I can really achieve myself, like jumping a personal best. ![]() “I don’t set the goal that I want to get an Olympic gold medal or anything like that. Having a focus on big goals isn’t important, or helpful, to Eliza. But simply the fact that I am now able to jump again in a competition is amazing.” If I can jump the qualifying height for the Olympics, that would be incredible. The track at Hastings is one I really enjoy. But I have no expectations for the comp coming up. “I haven’t reached the Olympic qualifying height yet, which is of course at the back of my mind. “We’ve been very careful to plan out the weeks and months ahead and it will be amazing to be competing again. The late January Potts Classic meeting held at Mitre 10 Park in Hastings is one of Eliza’s favourite places to vault. The fact that I am now able to jump twice a week feels so good!” I have an incredible team at High Performance Sport New Zealand and a really good medical team behind me. “I have had enough time out to fine tune things and recognise patterns. After trialling many means of treatment and recovery, Eliza is confident she has found the right mix and is ecstatic to be back in training ahead of her first competition of 2021. Her 2019 season was slimline after the diagnosis of a genetic disorder causing autoimmune inflammation that targets her tendons (she had been battling Achilles issues for several years). And you come back stronger – I learnt that after injury.” Just because things are different to how you planned, doesn’t mean they can’t have a positive effect. There wasn’t a lot that I could do about it, like everyone. “But I learnt that things don’t have to be perfect. It’s not easy to practice pole vault at home! ![]() There wasn’t a lot that I could do I didn’t have everything I needed to train with at home during lockdown. It’s been a long time since I have been able to feel like a normal athlete! “As a professional athlete, your job is to compete and do well. And there hasn’t been a more turbulent ride for international athletes in recent times than this past year, when the ride ground to an unwelcomed halt. The professional pole vaulter spoke to Heather Barker Vermeer in mid-January about the joy of sport and how she’s adapting to her new normal.īeing a professional athlete can be a bit like living on a rollercoaster, says Eliza McCartney. And you can trust that it is being done properly.Pole vaulting, loving the Shore and a passion for the natural environmentĪfter former Takapuna Grammar School student Eliza McCartney launched herself 4.80 metres into the air to claim Olympic bronze in 2016 at the age of 19, it wasn’t necessarily the height or the medal or her age that caught the world’s attention – it was that smile. “Recycling your phone with RE:MOBILE is no big drama, you just drop it off at one of the collection points and it is done. I have a real fascination with sustainability and how we can live in harmony with the earth and everything we do on it.”Įliza encourages everyone to dig out their old mobile phone and recycle with RE:MOBILE. “With environmental science I can have a focus on sustainability and the issues that the world is facing which is really important to me. Promoting RE:MOBILE made perfect sense for Eliza, not only because she has her eyes on one of the Tokyo Olympic medals, but because she also as a “huge interest” in the environment, sustainability and nature – so much so that she has changed from studying physiology to undertaking an environmental science degree with Massey University, something that she juggles alongside her training and international competitions. It solves your problem of what to do with your old mobile phone, it allows the precious resources in your phone to be reused and it raises money for Sustainable Coastlines.” ![]() “Recycling your mobile phone with RE:MOBILE is a win-win-win situation. It’s a very unique thing about the Tokyo Games, but hopefully something that keeps happening in the future.”Įliza is the ambassador for RE:MOBILE, a not-for-profit mobile phone recycling scheme. It’s a really good talking point for people to understand that recycling their e-waste is something that they can do. “The Olympics are the biggest sporting event in the world and so many people watch it. “I think it’s great that they are extracting metal from e-waste to make the medals,” said the 22-year-old pole vaulter who will be chasing her second Olympic medal in Tokyo. ![]()
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