The shock resignation of Nina Kennedy’s coach has left two Aussie pole vaulters in the lurch
The coach of star Aussie pole vaulters Nina Kennedy and Kurtis Marschall has announced his shock resignation, leaving both athletes in the lurch just months out from the Paris games.
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World pole vault champion Nina Kennedy is confident the sudden resignation of her coach Paul Burgess from the West Australian Institute of Sport won’t impact her Paris Olympic preparation.
The athletics community was shocked when it was announced on Tuesday that Burgess had resigned, effective immediately from WAIS and wouldn’t be attending this weekend’s Olympic trials in Adelaide.
No reason for the resignation has been given but it’s understood it came about after a build-up of issues and clash of personalities with WAIS management.
Burgess, who also coaches world championships bronze medallist Kurtis Marschall, will no longer be able to attend the WAIS training facility and oversee his charges in the crucial final stages of their Olympic preparation.
Kennedy and Marschall are scheduled to meet with Athletics Australia management over the weekend to sort out a program for the next three-and-a-half months leading into Paris.
Burgess’ assistant coach at WAIS, James Fitzpatrick, will play a major role.
“I am very confident that it will work itself out,” Kennedy said after pole vault qualifying on Thursday. “I know Athletics Australia have Kurt’s, I and Budgey’s (Burgess) best interests.
“They are going to help out. It is a bit of a distraction, it is a bit of noise and it is disappointing.
“You know what a lot of people don’t talk about our assistant coach James Fitzpatrick, he has been there with us at Budapest, at all my competitions, he knows me probably better than anybody.
“So I back myself, I back my team and I really appreciate AA stepping up.”
Kennedy’s Olympic preparation is following a similar path to last year with a stress fracture in her back again seeing her sidelined for a couple of months.
Given she recovered and then went on to share the gold medal with American Katie Moon at the world championships in Budapest last August, the 27-year-old is calling her recent setback a “good omen”.
“You know we have followed the exact path,” Kennedy said. “When we got my MRI results back after last season it was like yep, it’s a good omen, my back is no good but it’s a good omen.
“It worked last season, the rehab, everything basically worked to get me to world champs, obviously it didn’t work to hold the back together but it got me to August.
“We have adopted a similar approach, we have tweaked a few things to hope that I’m not jumping in pain like I was in Budapest but it’s a good omen and I’m just riding the wave.”
Kennedy, who competes in the national championships final on Saturday, isn’t fazed by the pressure of being world champion coming into her second Olympic Games.
“It’s an interesting one, you read articles about expected gold and one of our big hopes for gold and it doesn’t freak me out as much as I thought it would,” she says.
“Ask me three years ago and it would have freaked me out but now I have my goals, I have my expectations and whatever happens everyone can talk about it.
“The thing is I take that confidence (from Budapest) in terms of I’m a big-time performer, I competed in Oregon (third at world championships) and I competed the year after in Budapest and the week after in Zurich (Diamond League).
“So if you put me in a good competition I will perform, it feels like that.”
What’s standing in the way of this Aussie’s Olympic redemption?
Kurtis Marschall says it feels like a lifetime ago but not clearing a height in the Tokyo Olympic pole vault final is a memory which is never too far away.
As he ramps up his Paris Olympic preparation in his hometown of Adelaide this weekend, Marschall concedes he’s motivated by redemption for what happened three years ago.
“It’s only been three years but it feels like a lifetime,” Marschall says. “I feel like I have had two careers since then.
“We definitely showed up in Tokyo a little bit naive, I hadn’t competed against the boys internationally in a year or so because of Covid and because of injuries.
“I went out there all flustered and couldn’t control it. Definitely this time around I am out for some redemption so I’m looking forward to it.”
Marschall has come a long way since Tokyo which he showed at last year’s world championships in Budapest where he came away with a bronze medal behind world record holder Armand “Mondo” Duplantis.
“In 2022 we were still building, I was still finding myself. I’d have a good comp now and then but wasn’t consistent, it wasn’t like we had everything in order, all our ducks in a row,” he said.
“We had some tough conversations with my team to make sure we were all on the same page and we finally got it all together in 2023, which was like that first big step forward for me.
“I still had bad comps, still had ups and downs as you do but we gathered all the information, all the data and put it together for the championship which is when it really counts.
“I think we will take a lot of lessons out of that book from last year, and try to implement it this year.”
The 26-year-old cleared a personal best 5.95m in the world championships final and knows he will have to break through the magical six-metre barrier in Paris.
“You want to go into the championship knowing you have already jumped the height that’s necessary for a medal, it’s the same for the guys who are running the 100m, you want to know that you can run sub-10,” Marschall said.
“You don’t want to have to put it together on the day and hope that your stars align and that your lucky crystals are in your pocket.
“I basically want to go into the championship knowing I have jumped a few 90s, if not six metres prior to that, knowing that it is definitely in the bag and all I need to do is what I know I can do and what I know is possible.
“I have attempted six metres now 10 plus times but only really had two or three serious cracks at it. The more numbers that you try and attempt six metres the more likely that it is going to stay up.
“So that’s the plan, starting here in Adelaide, to keep peppering it, keep attacking it and you never know one day it might stay up.”
Marschall knows he is a part of a remarkable era in the pole vault with Duplantis’ domination similar to what Usain Bolt did in the sprints. The 24-year-old Swede’s current world record mark is 6.23m.
“It’s pretty awesome and he is such a genuinely cool, chilled dude,” he said. “He hasn’t let the fame get to his head, he still loves to sit down and have a chat or get on the golf course to play some holes.
“And he still loves the event, he goes out there every single time frothing, wanting to win, wanting to beat us and it’s an awesome thing to be a part of.
“Everyone asks (why he is so good). He does have the runway velocity which is faster, he is on really big poles relative to his body weight and he’s been jumping since he was six years old.
“That’s the thing, the training age. I started pole vault at 12, now we’re a very similar age but he started six years earlier so it’s pretty wild. He’s just a mature athlete for his age and it’s crazy that I am still learning from him.”
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