Katerina Stefanidi

Katerina Stefanidi (Greek: Κατερίνα Στεφανίδη; born 4 February 1990 ) is a Greek pole vaulter. She won the gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and has also competed at the 2012 London and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Stefanidi was the 2017 World champion and earned bronze at the 2019 World Championships. At the European Athletics Championships, she has won two gold medals (2016, 2018) and three silvers (2014, 2022, 2024). Indoors, she is a two-time World Indoor bronze medallist from 2016 and 2018, was the 2017 European Indoor champion and earned silver at the 2015 European Indoor Championships.

At age 15, Stefanidi became the 2005 World Under-18 champion and earned silver at the 2007 edition of this championships. The 18-year-old won bronze at the 2008 World U20 Championships. She then placed second at the 2011 European U23 Championships and third at the 2011 Universiade. She won four Diamond League Trophies between 2016 and 2019. Stefanidi was voted 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.

Personal life
Katerina 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.

Junior level: 2005–2010
Stefanidi attended the 1st High School of Pallini where she won the National High School Championships. She broke the national high school pole vault 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 under-18 best 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, winning the gold medal and setting a championship record of 4.30 m in the process. At the 2007 edition held in Ostrava, she was second with 4.25 m. In 2008, the 18-year-old 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. 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 pole vault champion Nick Hysong.

At Stanford, Stefanidi broke the freshman school record with a leap 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 Division I Indoor Championships, was the Pac-10 Conference champion and tied for fourth (4.25 m) at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Championships, after breaking the school record multiple times.

2011–2013
In 2011, she was second at the NCAA Indoors with 4.40 m. That same year she defended her Pac-10 Conference title (4.28 m) and was third at the NCAA Outdoors with 4.40 m. She placed second at the European Under-23 Championships in Ostrava, Czechia and third at Universiade in Shenzhen, China, after jumping a personal best of 4.45 m in both competitions to tie the Greek U23 record.

Her senior year, Stefanidi placed third at the NCAA Indoors (4.35 m). In the 2012 outdoor season, she was again 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, clearing 4.45 m. Her season's best, 4.51 m, achieved in July in 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's best.

2014–2015
In the 2014 indoor season, she improved her personal best to 4.55 m. In the 2014 outdoor season, she improved her lifetime best to 4.57 m and then established even better best of 4.60 m at the Diamond League meeting in New York City. 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 Glasgow Diamond League in with a jump at 4.65 m. One week before the European Championships she set another personal best at 4.71 m, equaling the Greek national record.

At the 2014 European Championships held in Zürich, Switzerland she had an easy qualification, while in the final she had her first success in major events by winning the silver medal with 4.60 m, losing the gold medal in the very last jump of the event to Anzhelika Sidorova. She later won the Birmingham Diamond League meeting with 4.57 m and took the third place at the circuit's final held in Zürich 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 pre-2014 PB was 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 the national record). At the 2015 European Indoor Championships, she won the silver medal with 4.75 m.

2016
During training season and outside of competitions, Stefanidi trained at SPIRE Institute and Academy, a United States Olympic Training Center in Geneva, Ohio.

In the 2016 indoor season, she set a national record with a huge leap of 4.90 m at the Millrose Games, which ranked 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, Oregon, Stefanidi 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 a Greek record of 4.86 m. In July at the Amsterdam European Championships, she won the gold medal with 4.81 m, taking the competition record from Yelena Isinbayeva.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Stefanidi became Olympic champion with a jump of 4.85 m, becoming the seventh Greek female athlete to win a gold medal at the Summer Olympic Games. In September, she won her first Diamond League Trophy.

2017–2018
During the 2017 indoor season, she became the European Indoor champion with a world-leading jump of 4.85 m. In the 2017 summer season, she set a world lead at the Rome Diamond League with 4.85 m and attempted for the first time to set a new world record. Two years after a disappointing performance at the 2015 Beijing World Championship, where she missed the final, Stefanidi won the gold medal at the World Championships held 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 14 October that year, at the traditional European Athletics gala in Vilnius, Lithuania, she was named European Women's Athlete of the Year.

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 Berlin European Championships. She won the Diamond League title 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.

2019–present
In 2019, she won the Diamond League Trophy for a record fourth consecutive year and won the bronze medal at the 2019 World Championships in Doha, Qatar.

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". At their local tracks, athletes had to collect as many vault clearances in two 15-minute periods as possible with the bar set at four metres. Stefanidi won with 34 clearances. She was training at SPIRE Institute and Academy to prepare for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. At the Games, she took the fourth place, equaling her season's best with a jump of 4.80 m.

Circuit wins and titles

 * Diamond League pole vault Overall winner (4): Diamond blue.svg 2016, Diamond blue.svg 2017, Diamond blue.svg 2018, Diamond blue.svg 2019
 * 2014 (1): Birmingham British Grand Prix
 * 2016 (4): Rabat Meeting International, Rome Golden Gala (=), Monaco Herculis, London Anniversary Games
 * 2017 (6): Doha Diamond League, Rome , London, Birmingham, Zürich Weltklasse (), Brussels Memorial Van Damme
 * 2018 (2): Lausanne Athletissima, Zürich
 * 2019 (3): Shanghai Diamond League, Birmingham, Brussels