120. Sandi Morris: Vaulting for Gold

The Hog Pod with Bo Mattingly

Sport & Story

Arkansas, Hogs, Sports, Razorbacks

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

NCAA Champion. World Champion. Olympic silver medalist. All of these things describe former Arkansas track star and professional pole vaulter Sandi Morris. Before she arrived on the Hill, she was just a little girl who paid a boy a quarter to race her, and fell in love with track forever. Morris' journey at Arkansas and professionally has been a ride: From finding a coach that changed the entire approach to the sport, to helping the Hogs win their first-ever national title in a women's sport and breaking a bone in her hand eight weeks before her first Olympic trials. They all culminated into the moment that has fueled her every day since 2016: a split second of feeling what it was like to be a gold medalist before the bar fell on her final jump in Rio. We sat down with Sandi as she prepared for the Tokyo Olympics to tell her story as she vaults for another chance at gold in 2021.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	If Morris goes clear at this height, she takes the gold medal.
0:05.0	If she fails, she gets to silver. That moment of the bar coming off the pegs motivates me every single training session, every
0:27.1	single jump because I now felt what it felt like to be a gold medalist for a split second, and I want to feel that for real. Welcome into the Hog Pot. I'm Bo Mattingly and this episode is made possible by
0:51.2	our friends at First Security Bank,
0:53.3	Sarazan Resort, Lindsay Golf, and Abilita Maria.
0:57.0	Now Sandy Morris, she's already in the lead.
0:59.9	This is to clear by a height.
1:02.3	Yeah, brilliant from Morris.
1:04.0	So, so consistent.
1:05.0	She really enjoys her vaulting.
1:07.0	She, one of those athletes who wears her heart in her sleeve.
1:09.0	NCAA National Champion, World Indoor Champion champion Olympic silver medalist
1:14.6	professional pull-vaulter and former razorback Sandy Morris is at the pinnacle of
1:19.9	her sport and this olympian has always thrived on competition.
1:24.8	This is literally how my track career started.
1:26.8	My parents saw me pay a little boy a quarter to race me. And then I proceeded to dust him to the pole that we decided was our
1:36.5	ending point. The track prodigy settled into the pole vault and found her way to Arkansas, where she broke
1:44.3	NCAA records and helped the razorbacks win their first ever national title.
1:48.8	And they took the 15-1-0, and she set the American to lead to
1:53.4	It's the most meaningful thing to break a barrier.
1:57.0	After college, she would go pro and made her first Olympic team in 2016.
2:01.4	In Rio, she barely brushed the bar on her gold medal attempt.
	...

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