It was a moment that marked the darker side of last year’s golden Games: Holly Bleasdale wiping away the tears from her stained cheeks while sitting disconsolate on the pole-vault mat. It was a strangely discordant note in Britain’s summer symphony of success. The then 20-year-old had looked lost in the sea of noise that roared her on inside the Olympic Stadium, repeatedly staring at her coach, Julien Raffalli, for inspiration. The golden spark they so desperately craved never came as the Lancashire athlete failed to clear 4.55m, a height she had surpassed with ease for much of 2012. It is a subject that is regularly brought up, and even now she is bemused by the tears. “I’m not quite sure why I cried,” she says. “I was more disappointed that I’d only jumped 4.45m. I didn’t even know where I’d finished, and [when] Paul [Bradshaw] said I was sixth in the world, I was actually quite happy.” Her recollection of the London Games has been helped by the event that followed, an unexpected wedding proposal by Bradshaw that night at the Olympic Park. In the intervening 10 months, there are just two sadnesses in her life. more
