Pole vaulter was flying high this year with a UK record but, as he tells Stuart Weir, his next goals are the six-metre barrier and greater consistency

Harry Coppell managed five outdoor competitions in 2020 but the one that stands out was his British record 5.85m in Manchester to win the British title.

"With the circumstances of this year,” the 24-year-old admits, “the 5.85m was definitely a surprise. It was something that I was trying to achieve after the way the indoor season went.

“Had it been a normal outdoor season, I felt I was definitely in shape to do it. However with lockdown and not being able to train and everything that added up to making 2020 the summer it was, it did come as a surprise to be able to hit that mark.”

The 24-year-old Wigan & District AC athlete sees the record as the culmination of lot of hard work in the winter of 2019, which led into an excellent 2020 indoor series with two jumps of 5.80m and a 5.70m, managing to get two Olympic qualifying heights indoors. Then came lockdown.

Coppell felt he did better training-wise that a lot of other athletes, as he explains: “Being based in Loughborough, I had access to a lot of outdoor spaces. We used the astroturf a lot and some of the cricket pitches, so I did manage to get some training done.

“When the track opened up, Holly [Bradshaw] and I were two of the first people in and it was great to get that access. But not doing any vaulting for such a long time is very difficult in such technical event.”

Then he had a few problems coming out of lockdown. “I’d been training away from the track,” he explains, “but when I came back on to the track, with impact training and vaulting, my body reacted quite badly to it and we had a couple of niggles as we were trying to get back into it. Originally the plan had been to open the season in June but that wasn’t physically possible.”

His first competition was on August 25 in Chorzów, Poland, where he jumped 5.42m for sixth. Then came the British Championships where “everything just came together from the get go”.

He adds: “Even in warm up I was jumping well. I had good guidance from Scott [Simpson, his coach] all through the competition to put me in the right place to jump it.”

He had three more competitions with a best of 5.60m in Rome. “The season amounted to one or two good performances but then an up and down series of competitions,” he recalls. “Because of everything that was going on this year, my coach, Scott, was unable to travel much this season. Being without a coach at events did have a big effect.

“The main thing I’ll be looking for going into next season is consistency. I need to increase my baseline because it seemed that this year I either jumped 5.80m or 5.40m and not much in between.”

His British record leap of 5.85m would have won the Doha Diamond League and taken second in Rome but frustratingly he was unable to repeat it.

What Coppell feels he has missed out on particularly this year is the experience of global championships. He explains: “While I was in Doha for the 2019 Worlds, I got injured in warm up and didn’t compete. By now I would have hoped to have had the experience in 2020 of the World Indoors, an Olympics and the European Championships. So it is a strange feeling but then it is exciting that it’s all coming up again next year.”

With a PB of 5.85m, the next big goal is the magical six metres. How does he get there? “That is what we’re trying to figure out that the moment! It’s quite an exciting time for us.

“We have come from a place where I was just trying to get to the British record which I have now achieved. Having done that, we can now have the conversations about how we get to the next bars. The current situation is that it could take a six-metre jump to medal at a major championship. And that is definitely where we’re aiming to get to eventually.

“But I have quite a lot of room for manoeuvre. I am still on five-metre poles while most other people on the circuit are on 5.10m poles or even 5.20m. I am also on a reasonably short run up – 16 strides instead of the more usual 18 or 20. But then there’s a lot of different factors that come along with changing, which we will have to manoeuvre around.

“I would love to say that it’s as easy as taking 20 steps with a 5.20m pole but I think it’s going to be quite a long journey but we’ll find out.”

The next stage of journey is not finding a magic formula but more hard work. “At the moment the entire focus is on training.  In the new year I am looking at doing a full indoor season. Because I’m changing run-ups and poles, indoors would be a good opportunity, in a conditioned, stable environment, to practise and try things out.”

Coppell achieved a lot in a difficult year in 2020 but there is lot more to come with an Olympics on the horizon.

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