ONE DAY, THREE RECORDS

S’pore’s Low rewrites pole vault national mark for 7th time with 5.34m effort

- Kimberly Kwek

With a massive 24cm improvement on his national record, pole vaulter Low Jun Yu rewrote the mark for the seventh time in two years, raising the bar once more.

His eyes were on another bar when he was younger, though. While selecting his co-curricular activity in Secondary 1, he had wanted to pick high jump but was told that at 1.4m, he was too short for it.

While his high jump dream did not materialise, that opened the door for Low to pursue pole vault under the guidance of coach David Yeo. It took him six years to catch up with his peers and win for the first time at the 2019 National School Games. But the 1.79m Low has progressed steadily since, claiming the national record in July 2022 with a 5.03m jump.

On July 3, Low rewrote the record three times as he cleared 5.34m to clinch gold at the Asean University Games in Surabaya, Indonesia, having gone into the competition with a personal best of 5.10m set in April. Indonesian Idan Fauzan Richsan bagged the silver with a 5.15m effort, while Malaysian Naufal Shahrul Afzam (5m) took home the bronze.