Silvia Ruiz

Happy birthday to Spain’s pole vaulter Silvia Ruiz, who spent her nineteenth birthday weekend winning a national medal on countback.

In August 2024 at the Spanish U20 Championships in Castellón, Silvia cleared 3.90m and took the bronze medal. So did the two athletes above her. All three cleared 3.90m; the medals were split on countback, and she then had three goes at 3.95m. That is the pole vault in one competition: everybody at the same height, everything decided by who missed fewer times on the way up, and the whole thing happening within a day of her own birthday.

She has cleared 4.00m indoors in Zaragoza and 4.00m outdoors at Manresa, and she was the Spanish U16 champion at fifteen. In May this year she took bronze at the Spanish University Championships with 3.70m, again decided on countback, this time in her favour.

The pole vault takes longer to learn than any other event in athletics and asks more of an athlete’s nerve while she learns it. A vaulter is running full speed at a fixed point carrying a four-metre implement, planting it, inverting, and trusting a piece of fibreglass to give the energy back. It takes years before any of that stops being frightening, and the athletes who get through those years are the ones who keep turning up when the bar is not moving.

She came up through Pratenc in El Prat de Llobregat, spent a season with FC Barcelona, and now vaults for Cornellà Atlètic, whom the Spanish federation named her among as a featured athlete when the club came up into the Liga Iberdrola. She studies at the Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona.

Per molts anys, Silvia! D’avui en molts anys, i que la barra pugi molt més amunt. Visca! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇪🇸