{"id":792640,"date":"2026-07-11T02:45:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T02:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/792640\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T02:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T02:45:13","slug":"monaco-diamond-league-athletics-2026-nina-kennedy-breaks-australian-record-wins-competition-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/792640\/","title":{"rendered":"Monaco Diamond League athletics 2026: Nina Kennedy breaks Australian record, wins competition | Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nina Kennedy<\/a> is full of \u201cmongrel\u201d. She\u2019s said that, and proved it, time and again throughout her illustrious pole vault career.<\/p>\n

In her latest competition on the road back from an injury-ravaged 2025 campaign, the world\u2019s best pole vaulter channelled that mongrel to produce the highest jump of her life and claim victory at the Monaco Diamond League<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nina Kennedy competing in Monaco.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Kennedy cleared 4.95 metres on Saturday (AEST) to shatter her Australian record by four centimetres.<\/p>\n

She also chalked up the highest jump in the world this year, and is now equal fifth on the all-time list.<\/p>\n

Kennedy, the reigning Olympic gold medallist<\/a>, demolished the field at the prestigious meet. She beat second place, American Amanda Moll, by 23 centimetres, and third place, the USA\u2019s Emily Grove, by 33 centimetres.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that I am in really good shape, and pole vault is so technical, and I just had to put everything all together,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cMonaco is the place to do it. I always jump well here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a good runway, an amazing crowd, and I am just really happy with how I jumped.\u201d<\/p>\n

The West Australian\u2019s 2025 campaign was derailed by injury. She didn\u2019t compete in a single tournament last year.<\/p>\n

She tore her left hamstring three times in six weeks.<\/p>\n

Finally, after going under the knife, she had a clean run, having jammed four months of rehab into six weeks. She was about to fly out to Tokyo for the world athletics championships, confident she could snare a medal<\/a> despite her injury-battered lead-up.<\/p>\n

Then, in one of her final training sessions before jetting out, her hamstring pinged again<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSport can be brutal,\u201d she said at the time.<\/p>\n

\"Nina<\/p>\n

Nina Kennedy\u2019s 2025 campaign was ruined by a string of hamstring injuries.\u00a0Instagram<\/p>\n

Kennedy is now seven competitions into her comeback.<\/p>\n

In her first Diamond League appearance of the comeback, in Rabat at the end of May, she cleared 4.80m and won the tournament.<\/p>\n

Her jump of 5.95m on Saturday (AEST) bettered the national record of 4.91m she vaulted at a train station in Zurich in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI genuinely believe that I can jump 5m, and I know if everything aligns I can do it,\u201d Kennedy said after her record-breaking win in Monaco.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI still have a lot of competitions for the rest of the season. That\u2019s my goal.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cProject 5m is here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Kennedy celebrates winning Olympic gold.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Monaco Diamond League press conference on Friday, Kennedy said the many hurdles she had faced in her career, including injuries and mental health challenges, had steeled her for the fight<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI would say through those seven years of struggles, I just showed up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThat taught me a lot of resilience.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve learnt that lesson, and I\u2019m going to take that through my career, but also\u00a0 through my life, my friendships and beyond that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s what is so special about sport; you learn these lessons that are damn hard, and not many other things teach you that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of fun, always a smile on my face and I guess the belief is always there to never give up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nina Kennedy is full of \u201cmongrel\u201d. She\u2019s said that, and proved it, time and again throughout her illustrious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-792640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}