Yahoo Sports Kentucky pole vaulter dominates competition to win first NCAA Outdoors gold medal
Keaton Daniel left no doubt.
The Kentucky Wildcats pole-vaulting superstar from Nevada won his first NCAA Outdoors championship Wednesday after earlier this year winning his first NCAA Indoor championship.
The UK senior is the best college pole vaulter in the nation bar none — by a full 2 inches it turned out.
Daniel, who holds the Wildcats’ school records in the event both indoors and outdoors, did not require a record-setting performance to complete Wednesday’s win in Eugene, Oregon, finishing at a winning height of 18 feet, 7¼ inches.
Clayton Simms of Kansas took the silver medal at 18-5¼. Houston’s Christyan Sampy shared bronze at 18-1¼ with Duke’s Simen Guttormsen.
Daniel’s Kentucky teammate Dalton Shepler finished 17th with a best vault of 17-1½.
Daniel achieved gold in his third try at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, where he finished third in 2022 and eighth in 2023.
He is the first Wildcat to sweep indoor and outdoor national championships in the pole vault in the same season.
Also Wednesday, Kentucky narrowly missed qualifying for the finals in the 4-by-100-meter relay. The Cats’ time of 38.78 seconds was good for 10th place in the preliminaries but only the top nine qualified for the finals. UK’s team included Shavique Bascus, Clinton Muunga, Miles Jones and Kennedy Lightner.
Lightner ran 14th in the 200-meter preliminaries Wednesday with a time of 20.39 seconds, also narrowly missing out on the finals in that event.
Thursday was reserved for the women at Hayward Field. Kentucky’s Kate Powers (hammer throw) and Payton Phillips (pole vault) were scheduled to compete for medals. UK also had entrants in the preliminaries of the 400 (Jania Martin, Oneika McAnnuff), the 800 (Sydney Steely) and the 4-by-400 relay (Alexis Glasco, Cha’iel Johnson, Jania Martin, Oneika McAnnuff, Reynei Wallace)
On Friday, Kentucky’s Charity Hufnagel competes in the women’s heptathlon and Luke Brown takes part in the men’s triple jump.
The NCAA Outdoors concludes Saturday.
