Holly Bradshaw

At the World Championships in Beijing, Bleasdale cleared 4.70 m before failing at 4.80 m. With this height, she finished 7th in the final where the Cuban Yarisley Silva took the gold medal with a jump of 4.90 m.

Holly Bethan Bradshaw (née Bleasdale, born 2 November 1991) is an English track and field athlete who specialises in the pole vault.

She attended Runshaw College in Leyland from 2008 to 2010, where she completed her A-Levels.

She is now studying for a degree in Sports Exercise and Science at Manchester Met University via distance learning to allow time for her training.

Bradshaw's Junior career took off when she broke the British Junior pole vault record in June 2010, with a vault of 4.35m.

A month later, she competed at the 2010 World Junior Championship, in which she was the favourite for the gold medal.

However, she failed to vault higher than 4.15m, resulting in a bronze medal behind Angelica Bengtsson and Victoria von Eynatten, who vaulted 4.25m and 4.20m respectively.

Bradshaw's first competition of the 2011 season was the 2011 European Indoor Championships, where she finished 11th in the qualifying round, with a best vault of 4.45m.

Later in 2011, she represented Great Britain in the European Team Championships, where she finished in 5th place.

In June 2011, Bradshaw set a new British U23 record with a 4.53m vault at the British Under-23 Championships in Bedford.

However, just 5 days later, she set a new British senior record of 4.70m.

She is the current British record holder in the event indoors and outdoors, with clearances of 4.87 metres (2012 indoors) and 4.90 metres (2021 outdoors).

She also won bronze at the 2012 World Indoor Championships, gold at the 2013 European Indoor Championships, bronze at the 2018 European Championships, and silver at the 2019 European Indoor Championships.

Coached by Scott Simpson, she has been consistently ranked among the world's best and has been ranked in the world top ten on the Track and Field News merit rankings four times (2012, 2013, 2016, 2017).

Bradshaw was involved in gymnastics from the age of six until she was 11, when she decided to try running.

It was not until she was 17 that she tried pole vaulting for the first time.

Bradshaw was educated at Parklands Languages High School, a co-educational state comprehensive school in the town of Chorley in Lancashire, in North West England.

In January 2012, Bradshaw improved the British indoor record by clearing 4.87m in Villeurbanne, during a Perche Élite Tour meeting.

This put her third on the world all-time list, behind Yelena Isinbayeva and Jenn Suhr, and also third all-time for indoor performances.

At the same competition she made her first world indoor record attempt at 5.01m, but failed.

Later that year, on 11 March she won a bronze medal at the World Indoor Championships held in Istanbul.

Bradshaw competed in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

She managed to reach the final, but knocked the bar at 4.55m, causing her to crash out of the running for a medal.

However, she managed to finish in the top 8.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, Bradshaw said that she was disappointed but that "by Rio, I will be at the top of my game."

She has been hoping to seek glory that was taken away from her in the 2012 Olympic games in the same stadium, and afterward said she would focus on the 2018 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Birmingham.

Bradshaw won gold at the 2013 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Gothenburg with a height of 4.67m in a jump off with Poland's Anna Rogowska, both having previously jumped 4.72.

She later stated in an interview that she could have shared gold with Rogowska, but chose to jump off to be the lone winner of the gold.

In 2015 Bradshaw vaulted 4.55 m to be selected in the British Team to the world Championships.

Bradshaw competed in the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics, jumping 4.60m to advance to the final.

In the final she cleared 4.70m on her second attempt but failed her three attempts at 4.80m and finished fifth.

She almost cleared her last attempt at 4.80m but in the last moment the cross bar fell to the ground.

After the Olympics, she competed in 2016 Diamond League in Zurich, winning first place with 4.76m.

Bradshaw participated in many of the 2017 Diamond League meetings, and also reached the finals of the Diamond League in Brussels.

She set a new personal best outdoors in Manchester in the same year at 4.81m.

She participated in other notable events of pole vault around the world that year, which secured her a place in the 2017 IAAF World Championships in London in front of the home crowd, where she ended up 6th with a jump of 4.65m, and she lost the bronze medal only on count back.

She also won the national outdoor championships in 2017.

She also won at the 2018 Athletics World Cup.

Bradshaw started her 2018 indoor season in February, competing in the Perche Élite Tour meet in Rouen, France, where she won with a clearance of 4.60 metres before going on to clear 4.70m on 30 March at an outdoor competition in Australia.

Bradshaw won a bronze medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics.