The Cornish athlete who is shining bright ahead of Olympics
THERE are few British sporting stars currently shining brighter than Molly Caudery. The Cornish athlete has pole vaulted her way into the spotlight ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
It’s following a rapid rise during which she has established herself as a real medal contender this summer. The 24-year-old was recently crowned world indoor champion and could become one of the faces of the Games should she add Olympic gold.
Caudery’s background is atypical of an athletics star. The pole vaulter was born in Truro and grew up in the village of Illogan. Her childhood was shaped by spending time in the sea and she is a keen surfer when not training and competing.
She was also born into a family of pole vaulters, with mum Barbara, dad Stuart, and brother Finley all competitors in their own right, and Stuart acting as her coach between the ages of 10 and 18 at Cornwall Athletics Club in Redruth.
Caudery’s talent was clear from an early age and she represented Great Britain at youth level before spending time at the University of Miami and Loughborough University.
Caudery’s path to the top was not always smooth, with her time in Miami cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic. She then made the switch to Loughborough to train alongside Olympic medallist Holly Bradshaw and coach Scott Simpson, but almost saw her career cut short by a freak accident in 2021.
Caudery almost lost a finger in a freak weightlifting accident that needed three surgeries before an Achilles injury led to nine months on the sidelines.
“As I brought the bar down, my finger caught between where you rack it and the bar,” she told MailOnline. “It was 90 percent off. It was holding on by the skin on the side. That was a pretty big setback that I managed to come back from.”
Caudery’s comeback from injury was exactly what she would have hoped for, with a first senior international medal coming at the 2022 Commonwealth Games when she won silver in front of a home crowd in Birmingham. More success flowed throughout 2023 but it was in 2024 that Caudery really hit her stride, with the 24-year-old registering two world leads and three personal bests in the space of just two months.
That yielded a British indoor title as well as reverberations around the athletics world that there was a new contender for gold in women’s pole vault after returning better and stronger from her injury setbacks.
“When I had those surgeries, I had a lot of time just to think really and think about my vaulting,” she said. “I think you can almost unlearn some bad behaviours in your jumping, so I just did so much visualisation in those eight months of rehab.
“Then when I came back, I was a different vaulter, and I was so hungry for that success after having so much time off. I just threw everything I had at it, even when I was rehabbing, I was doing everything I could to make sure I was in the best position that I could be, and it just worked out really well for me.”
Caudery’s start to an Olympic year would have been enough success for almost any athlete but she took it one step further by become world indoor champion in Glasgow in March. Her gold was part of a raucous Saturday night in Scotland that also saw world outdoor champion Josh Kerr win 3000m gold to send the home crowd wild.
If there had been plenty of talk about Caudery’s potential beforehand, this was her announcement on the world stage as one to be reckoned with. For Caudery herself, it was a case of realising her own ability, with expectations for the summer quickly revised.
“It is just unbelievable,” she said. “It was such a special moment to do it in front of a home crowd, family watching and everyone from all over the nation supporting too.
“I am living my dream and I am so grateful for that. My expectations have absolutely changed. My original view for the future was always LA 2028, that was the Olympic Games that I would be focussing on to get a medal, everything up until then was just building.
“But now I think I have come to where I am so quickly, I need to adjust to that a little and then have those conversations.”
Caudery’s achievements have led to increased interest in the 24-yearold, something she is more than happy to lap up. The Cornish athlete is one of the most-followed British athletes on Instagram, boasting over 250,000 followers - numbers only Dina Asher-Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson can better amongst athletics stars.
“You have to embrace it all, I am living my dream and I am so grateful for that,” she said. “I want all of that, I want people’s media attention, it is all part of it. I am just so grateful for it all and I just use it to help me.
“I have got such a great support team around me and they are never going to let my head get too big or anything like that. I am just so grateful to be where I am, that will keep me grounded too and never take anything for granted.”