Coach of West Aussie World Champ: “I can’t put it into words. It feels like a movie”
Australia’s newest world champion Nina Kennedy has barely been able to contain her excitement over the past 24 hours since earning a share of the women’s pole vault gold medal at the World Athletics Championships.
But there may well be somebody who is even more excited than she is.
Speaking on Wide World of Sports on Thursday night, her coach Paul Burgess was bursting with pride and was still coming to terms with the enormity of the achievement.
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“I can’t put it into words. It feels like a movie.”
Burgess woke with a slightly sore head, a reasonably raspy voice and a gigantic smile; all aspects he described to Adam Papalia.
“It was a great night and lots of people were trying to help her understand how life-changing this is for her.”
Kennedy and Olympic gold medalist Katie Moon decided to share the gold medal after both clearing 4.90m but failing at 4.95m.
Burgess explained the close connection he shares with Kennedy and the importance of it to success.
“I’m proud of how we communicate. When we make decisions and it works, it feels really good.”
Although he celebrated accordingly, Burgess’ attention now turns to the Men’s pole vault final on Saturday Night (Sunday morning Perth time) where he will have another athlete gunning for a medal when Kurtis Marschall takes to the Budapest sky.
“I enjoyed myseld last night, I’ll try to absorb what happened with Nina, but now we’ve got two days and I don’t want to go to that comp with any less focus on him (Marschall) than I had for Nina”.