Over the past two days, Sam Kendricks generated as much buzz for his comments in the mixed zone than for anything he’s accomplished in a competition recently.
Kendricks, the most-accomplished pole vaulter in U.S. history, said on Friday that he would consider skipping the Paris Games if he qualified. He feels that he was mistreated by track and field’s governing bodies after he missed the 2020 Olympics due to a positive COVID-19 test. The two-time world champion carried his grievance to Eugene and the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials this week and flirted with the idea of boycotting the Paris Games.
“Why not?” Kendricks said after Friday’s preliminary round. “It won’t mean anything if I don’t make the squad. But it is expository to say it. Why should I go? They left me behind and never even said, ‘I was sorry.’”
On Sunday, Kendricks put all doubts to rest — both on and off the track.
The 31-year-old captured his seventh outdoor national title and set a meet record by clearing 19 feet, 5 inches. Chris Nilsen finished second at 19-3. Jacob Wooten took third after also clearing 19-3. He finished behind Nilsen as he required one more attempt to get over the opening height of 17-11 1/4, whereas Nilsen’s first miss did not occur until the second height of the day.
Shortly after his victory, Kendricks elaborated on his comments from Friday while also confirming that he intends to compete in Paris this summer.
“I said that I may not accept my spot on the Olympic team. I will; I’m gonna go to the Olympics. My one condition for this is that I needed one of my buddies from the last Olympics to make it — either (KC Lightfoot) or (Nilsen),” Kendricks said. “They’ve been my brothers for a long time now. I’ve been in this sport longer than anybody else at the highest levels and the road is lonely. You wanna have your friends by your side.
“When you’re forced for your friends to abandon and they’re conflicted between giving up their dreams to support you or going forth without you, that is the tear that 2021 provided me. I don’t think anybody would fault me for that.”
Kendricks captured a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics and won gold medals at the 2017 and 2019 World Championships. He owns the fifth-best mark ever and second-best by an American with a personal best of 19-10 1/2. He has been a pivotal figure in the pole vault world at a time that the event has produced arguably its greatest-ever crop of American talent.
Lightfoot, Kendricks and Nilsen have all produced top-10 all-time marks within the last five years. Lightfoot, who owns the sixth-best mark in the world this season, did not advance past Friday’s semifinal.
“This was officially the hardest team to make in the history of American pole vault and track and field,” Kendricks said. “5.87 (meters) — had to jump under pressure the trials record to submit my spot. That’s not supposed to be the way it is; I won it by a foot in 2016. But man, we have raised the tide of this sport. I am so proud.”
While Kendricks has directed plenty of frustration toward the way his situation was handled during the Tokyo Games, he has been equally vocal about the Olympics as a whole. He believes that both the qualifying process and the lionization of the games themselves are detrimental to the growth of track and field.
“There’s two people who wanna go to the Olympics: people who really want to medal, and people who just want the experience,” Kendricks said. “They wanna get the tattoo on their arm. They wanna say they’re an Olympian. And that is a title worth going for; I’m not going to begrudge anybody chasing that dream. It’s a bad dream if you’re asking me. It’s a terrible way to put your focus — ‘I want to be an Olympian one day’ — there’s too many ways to fail, right? There’s too many ways that you could doubt yourself.
“I want to build a sport that doesn’t rely on the Olympics. I said I don’t like the Olympics, I think it’s too far gone. It’s not a good place to corner our young people; it’s actually self-deprecating. If you talk to any one of these pole vaulters out here, a lot of athletes, man, they have a lot of things they’re having to fight. Why is a grown man crying on the track out there because he didn’t make this team? Is it that heartbreaking? Yeah, it is. Because we’ve built it up to be like this. Why do we have to build a situation where all of a sudden if you’re not top three, if you’re not the winners, you’re broken down to pieces. I hate that. I want to build a sport that’s different.”
Nilsen, who captured the silver medal at the 2020 Olympics and also at the 2022 Outdoor World Championships, also voiced his frustrations on Sunday.
“That’s the worst part about the American trials when it comes to the Olympics. … There’s so many stories of world-record holders, Olympic champions, world champions coming to the Olympic trials and missing. Then going off to some meet and breaking the record by even more. It’s freaking ridiculous, man,” Nilsen said. “There’s so many guys that should be at the Olympics, that are American, that aren’t going to be there because they got knocked out of the top three of the Olympic trials in June when the Olympics are in August when it matters.”
Jarrid Denney covers high school sports and Oregon State for the Statesman Journal. He can be reached at JDenney@salem.gannett.com or on X @jarrid_denney
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Sam Kendricks wins 11th national title, sounds off on Olympic Games
