Katerina Stefanidi

Katerina Stefanidi

Katerina Stefanidi at 2019 Birmingham Grand Prix
Personal information
Nationality	Greek
Born	(1990-02-04) 4 February 1990 (age 31) Cholargos, Athens, Greece[1]
Height	173 cm (5 ft 8 in)[2]
Weight	59 kg (130 lb)[2]
Sport
Country	Greece
Sport	Athletics
Event(s)	Pole vault
University team	Stanford University
Coached by	Mitchell Krier
Achievements and titles
Personal best(s)	4.91m NR[3] (2017) 4.90m (i) NR (2016)
show Medal record Event 1st 2nd 3rd Olympic Games 1 0 0 World Championships 1 0 1 World Indoor Championships 0 0 2 European Championships 2 1 0 European Indoor Championships 1 1 0 Total 5 2 3 Women's athletics Representing  Greece Olympic Games 2016 Rio de Janeiro Pole vault World Championships 2017 London Pole vault 2019 Doha Pole vault World Indoor Championships 2016 Portland Pole vault 2018 Birmingham Pole vault European Championships 2016 Amsterdam Pole vault 2018 Berlin Pole vault 2014 Zürich Pole vault European Indoor Championships 2017 Belgrade Pole vault 2015 Prague Pole vault World Youth Championships 2005 Marrakesh Pole vault 2007 Ostrava Pole vault World Junior Championships 2008 Bydgoszcz Pole vault European U23 Championships 2011 Ostrava Pole vault Summer Universiade 2011 Shenzhen Pole vault Representing Europe Continental Cup 2018 Ostrava Pole vault

Katerina Stefanidi (Greek: Κατερίνα Στεφανίδη; born 4 February 1990) is a Greek pole vaulter. She won the gold medal at the 2016 Olympic Games with a jump of 4.85 meters^[2] and has also competed at the 2012 and the 2020 Summer Olympics . She is the current European Outdoor (2018) and Diamond League (2019) champion, a World Outdoor champion, a European Indoor champion, and a two-time World Indoor bronze medalist. Stefanidi has won a total of ten (10) medals in all five major international athletics championships.^[1] She was named the European Women's Athlete of the Year in 2017, and the Greek Female Athlete of the Year in 2017 and 2019. Because of her achievements she is widely regarded as the greatest female athlete in the history of Greek sport.^[4][5]

Personal life[]

Stefanidi was born to athletes Georgios Stefanidis and Zoi Vareli, who competed internationally in the triple jump and sprints, respectively. Her younger sister, Georgia, is also a pole vaulter. In 2015, she married Mitchell Krier, her future coach and also a former pole vaulter. She lives in the United States.

Career[]

Junior level: 2005–2010[]

Stefanidi attended the 1st High School of Pallini and won the National High School Championships. She broke the National High School record and the Championship record winning gold at the 2006 Gymnasiade. Growing up she broke all of the World age-group records for the ages of 11–14 and right after she turned 15, she broke the World Youth (under-18) record with a jump of 4.37 m. Her first international experience came at the age of 15, when she represented Greece at the 2005 World Youth Championships in Marrakesh, placing first with 4.30 m. At the 2007 World Youths, held in Ostrava, she was second with 4.25 m. In 2008, she won the bronze medal with 4.25 m at the World Junior Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland. The same year she gained an athletic scholarship at Stanford University and began competing for the Stanford Cardinal.^[6] She received her master's degree in cognitive psychology with Dr. Gene A. Brewer at Arizona State University while training under the guidance of 2000 Olympic Champion Nick Hysong.

At Stanford, Stefanidi broke the freshman school record with a jump of 4.13 m, under the guidance of coach Kris Mack and head coach Edrick Floreal. In 2010, under the guidance of Toby Stevenson, she tied for fifth place (4.30 m) at the NCAA Indoor Championships, was the Pac-10 Conference Champion and tied for fourth (4.25 m) at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, after breaking the school record multiple times.

2011–2013[]

In 2011, she was second at the NCAA Indoor Championships with 4.40 m. That same year she defended her Pac-10 Conference title (4.28 m) and was third at the NCAA Outdoor Championships (4.40 m). She placed second at the European Athletics U23 Championships in Ostrava and third at Universiade in Shenzhen, China, after jumping a personal best of 4.45 m to tie the Greek under-23 record. Her senior year, Stefanidi placed third at the NCAA Indoor Championships (4.35 m).

In the 2012 outdoor season, she was the Pac-12 Conference Champion, in Eugene, Oregon, where she broke her own school record with 4.48 m. A month later she became the NCAA Champion in Des Moines, Iowa (4.45 m). Her season best, 4.51 m, achieved in July 2012 at Livermore, California, is the Greek under-23 record. In 2013, she faced some injury problems, thus not improving her personal best, with a 4.45 m season best.

2014–2015[]

In the 2014 indoor season, she improved her personal best at 4.55 m. In the 2014 outdoor season, she improved her personal best at 4.57 m and established a new personal best at 4.60 m at the Diamond League meeting at New York City, where she placed 4th. She competed for the first time at the European Athletics Team Championships 1st league, held in Tallinn, representing Greece and winning with a 4.55 m jump. She managed to improve her PB again at the Diamond league in Glasgow with a jump at 4.65 m, taking the third place. One week before the European Championships she set another PB at 4.71 m, equaling the outdoor Greek national record.

At the 2014 European Championships, she had an easy qualification, while in the final she had her first success in major events as a woman by winning the silver medal with 4.60 m, losing the gold medal in the very last jump of the event, made by Anzhelika Sidorova. She later won the Birmingham Diamond League meeting with 4.57 m and took the third place at the Diamond league final, held in Zurich with 4.67 m. With these results, she took the second place overall at the Diamond League series, only behind Fabiana Murer. During 2014, she jumped 10 times above 4.55 m, while her former PB was at 4.51 m.

During the 2015 indoor season, she set a personal best four times (4.56 m, 4.60 m, 4.61 m and 4.77 m, which was temporarily a national record). At the 2015 European Indoor Championships, she won the silver medal with 4.75 m. In April 2015, she was named Female Athlete of the Month by European Athletics.

2016–present[]

During training season and outside of competitions, she trained at SPIRE Institute and Academy, an olympic training center in Geneva, Ohio. ^[7]

In the 2016 indoor season, she set a national record with a huge leap at 4.90 m at the Millrose Games, which ranks her at fourth place of all time in the event, tied with Demi Payne who cleared the same height at the same meeting. At the World Indoor Championships in Portland, she won the bronze medal with a jump of 4.80 m. In the following months she continuously improved her personal outdoor record (4.73, 4.75 and 4.77 m) and in Filothei she set an outdoor national record of 4.86 m. In July, at the 2016 European Championships in Athletics she won the gold medal with 4.81 m, taking the competition record from Yelena Isinbayeva.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics she became Olympic champion with a jump of 4.85 m, becoming the seventh Greek female athlete, and fourth in athletics, (after Voula Patoulidou, Athanasia Tsoumeleka, Fani Chalkia, Sofia Bekatorou, Emilia Tsoulfa and Anna Korakaki) to win a gold medal at the Summer Olympics. In September, she ranked first and won the diamond at the 2016 Diamond League series.

During the 2017 indoor season, she became the European champion at the European Indoor Championships with a jump of 4.85 m, setting a new WL height. In the 2017 summer season she set a world lead in the Rome Golden Gala with 4,85 and attempted for the first time to set a new world record. Two years after a disappointing performance at the 2015 World Championship where she missed the final, Stefanidi won the gold medal at the 2017 World Championships in Athletics in London, where she even broke her own Greek record – and set a new world lead for 2017 – by vaulting 4.91 m. Katerina completed her 2017 outdoor season undefeated (14 wins in a row) and winning the Diamond league final in Brussels.

On Saturday 14 October 2017, at the traditional European Athletics Federation gala in Vilnius (Lithuania), she was voted as European Athlete of the Year 2017.^{[citation needed]}

In 2018, Stefanidi increased her collection of medals, taking the third place (4.80 m.) at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham, and the first place (4.85 m) at the European Championships in Berlin. She won the 2018 Diamond League series (4.87 m) for a third consecutive year and completed the season with a second place (4.85 m) behind Anzhelika Sidorova, representing Europe at the Continental Cup.

In 2019, she won the 2019 Diamond League series (4.83 m) for a record fourth consecutive year and won the bronze medal at the 2019 World Championships in Athletics in Doha.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most public sports events, Stefanidi, along with Katie Nageotte and Alysha Newman, took part in an online event conceived by Renaud Lavillenie and organized by World Athletics called "The Ultimate Garden Clash", during which the competitors had to collect as many vault clearances in two 15-minute periods in their respective isolated practice tracks; Stefanidi won with 34 clearances.^[8] She was training at SPIRE Institute and Academy to prepare for the 2020 Olympics.^[9] At the 2020 Olympics she took the 4th place, equaling her season's best, with a jump of 4.80 metres. ^[10]

Honours & results[]

Year	Competition	Venue	Position	Notes
Representing  Greece
2005	World Youth Championships	Marrakesh, Morocco	1st	4.30 m CR
2007	World Youth Championships	Ostrava, Czech Republic	2nd	4.25 m SB
2008	World Junior Championships	Bydgoszcz, Poland	3rd	4.25 m SB
2011	European U23 Championships	Ostrava, Czech Republic	2nd	4.45 m NU23R
	Universiade	Shenzhen, China	3rd	4.45 m
2012	European Championships	Helsinki, Finland	Final	NM
	Olympic Games	London, United Kingdom	Qual. round	4.25 m
2013	European Indoor Championships	Gothenburg, Sweden	Qual. round	4.36 m
2014	European Championships	Zurich, Switzerland	2nd	4.60 m
2015	European Indoor Championships	Prague, Czech Republic	2nd	4.75 m
	World Championships	Beijing, China	Qual. round	4.45 m
2016	World Indoor Championships	Portland, Oregon	3rd	4.80 m
	European Championships	Amsterdam, Netherlands	1st	4.81 m CR
	Olympic Games	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	1st	4.85 m
	Diamond League		1st	details
2017	European Indoor Championships	Belgrade, Serbia	1st	4.85 m WL
	European Team Championships	Lille, France	1st	4.70
	World Championships	London, United Kingdom	1st	4.91 m NR, WL
	Diamond League Final	Brussels, Belgium	1st	4.85 m
2018	World Indoor Championships	Birmingham, UK	3rd	4.80 m
	European Championships	Berlin, Germany	1st	4.85 m CR
	Diamond League Final	Zurich, Switzerland	1st	4.87 m SB
	Continental Cup	Ostrava, Czech Republic	2nd	4.85 m CR
2019	European Indoor Championships	Glasgow, Scotland	4th	4.65 m
	European Team Championships	Bydgoszcz, Poland	1st	4.70 m
	Diamond League Final	Brussels, Belgium	1st	4.83 m SB
	World Championships	Doha, Qatar	3rd	4.85 m SB
2021	Olympic Games	Tokyo, Japan	4th	4.80 m =SB [11]
	Diamond League Final	Zurich, Switzerland	2nd	4.77 m

Record progression[]

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ekateríni Stefanídi.

• Katerina Stefanidi at World Athletics
• Katerina Stefanidi at the International Olympic Committee
• Katerina Stefanidi at Olympics at Sports-Reference.com (archived)