Olivia Gross

Happy birthday to Australia’s national pole vault champion Olivia Gross, who moved across the country to chase this event and came back with a national title.

Olivia grew up in Geelong and came through Geelong Guild Athletics Club, then relocated to Perth on a WAIS scholarship specifically because the pole vault programme there was better. Her words at the time were that the training was far more intense and it was simply the next step she wanted to take. That decision has paid out in full. In March 2025 she cleared a personal best of 4.35m at the Perth Track Classic, and a month later she won the Australian Championships with 4.21m. She had finished second at nationals the year before and third the year before that. Third, second, first, in three consecutive Australian championships — you cannot draw a straighter line than that.

She has also won abroad, taking the Busan International Pole Vault Meeting in South Korea with 4.20m and returning the following year as defending champion, which is an unusual and underrated thing for an Australian vaulter to have on the résumé. She qualified for the World U20 Championships on the way up, and in February she was back on the runway at the Perth Track Classic in a field headlined by the Olympic champion.

Alongside the vaulting she is a certified Pilates instructor, which for a pole vaulter is less a side interest than a professional advantage — the event is essentially a gymnastics move performed at sprinting speed on a bending fibreglass lever.

Happy birthday, Olivia! Wishing you a year of clean plants, big bends and bars that stay put. You beauty! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇦🇺