I Can Do This

Published by SPIKES on September 9, 2016

A freak accident and broken bone are no match for a dream. This is how American pole vaulter Sandi Morris's refusal to give in led her to heights she never imagined.

“You know what, I can do this,” Sandi Morris told herself, wiping away the tears.

She was sat in her car outside her doctor’s surgery in Arkansas, digesting a diagnosis the former Razorback had not expected. Three days had passed since her pole had shattered mid-vault at the Ostrava World Challenge meet in the Czech Republic. A section of splintered pole catapulted into her shoulder.

“I couldn’t lift my arm,” Morris, 24, says. “It was black and blue and had a big cut on it. I thought I had torn something.”