Rivals Agree to Share Gold Medal at Track and Field World Championships

Two pole vaulters gave a masterclass in sportsmanship.

Few sports deal in thinner margins than track and field. A second, an inch or a centimeter might be all the separation between gold-medal glory and fourth-place disappointment.

Sometimes, however, the margin is even closer than that.

Such a situation arose at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest Wednesday, as pole vaulters Nina Kennedy of Australia and Katie Moon of the United States both cleared 4.90 meters—the best total in the world this season.

The two competitors could have advanced to a jump-off, which would have determined separate gold and silver medalists.

Kennedy, however, had a different idea—to share gold, to which Moon readily agreed.

“I kind of looked at her like, ‘hey, girl, you maybe want to share this?’” Kennedy recalled saying to Moon. “And the relief, you could just see it on (her) face, and you could see it on my face.”

“When it looked like she maybe didn’t want to (jump), I don’t want to, either,” Moon said. “Did we just become best friends?”

It marked the first time a world championship event awarded two gold medals. A similar occurrence took place at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, when Mutaz Barshim of Qatar and Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy agreed to split gold in the men’s high jump.