Reaching new heights- Hard-luck pole vaulter Alysha Newman sets personal and Canadian bests to win bronze medal.

Hard-luck pole vaulter Alysha Newman sets personal and Canadian bests to win bronze medal. Alysha Newman wanted to join the 1.90-metre club in the pole vault but was happy to settle for a Canadianrecord 1.85 metres.

- By Rosie Dimanno

PARIS Announcement: A bouncing baby bronze, weighing 455 grams, its delivery most unexpected.

A miracle whelp, you might even say, for Canadian pole vaulter Alysha Newman, with the sheen of gold all the same for an athlete long-plagued by mishaps and misfortune.

The only medal for Canada on Day 12 of the Olympics. And the only final Newman has made in this accursed discipline in three Olympic tries.

It was Canada’s first pole vault podium, with a new national record, since William Halpenny took bronze in the men’s competition at the 1912 Stockholm Games.

That’s a whole lotta firsts for the 30-year-old from Delaware, Ont.

Newman soared over the bar at 4.85 metres on her second attempt at the height, and ran across the pad in a little jubilation dance. As she explained afterward, she was mimicking an injury, which would have surprised nobody for the hard-luck vaulter. She turned it into a sassy “twerk!”

“Did you guys like that?” she asked reporters in the mixed zone.

Nothing not to like about this tenacious woman who had the wherewithal, I think, to actually apply a fresh layer of cherry red lipstick in the middle of competition.

“Getting third — well, I’ve never gotten third before — is funny because you have to still wait ’til the other girls are done. It’s so awkward, standing there. What do I do? Do I celebrate? Do I kiss everyone? Do I cry?”