Selection Is ‘Surreal' For Teenager Caudery

LAST year Molly Caudery was taking her GCSEs and had never set foot outside Europe. But in March the pole vault prodigy will set off for Australia as the youngest athlete in the England team for the Commonwealth Games, writes Jason Henderson.

The Cornish teenager is only 17 but will turn 18 just before she flies out to the Gold Coast. “There won’t be much time to party,” she says. “I’ll be too busy training for the Games.”

The English Schools pole vault champion was named last month in a 75-strong England squad and she says: “It’s totally surreal. Last year one of my goals was possibly to get to the Commonwealth Games but it was more of a dream, really, and I didn’t really expect to do it.

“This will be my first senior international vest, which is crazy. It only seems like yesterday that I was doing GCSEs and now I’m in the England team for the Commonwealth Games in Australia.

“Competing there will open up so many opportunities potentially and will give me amazing experience. I plan to train super-hard this winter and then who knows what might happen when I go out there.”

Caudery was speaking to AW soon after landing back in the UK following a tour of the United States. She is currently studying at Truro College but plans to go to an American university next autumn and she checked out Georgia, Florida State and Kentucky.

“The facilities were amazing and put the ones in the UK to shame,” she says. “I went with my dad and it was my first trip outside Europe.”