Olympics, performance under pressure, recovery, resilience—these themes come together in Margot Chevrier’s story. During the 2024 Glasgow World Indoor Championships, a life-changing injury puts her on a precarious path… but her spirit? Unbreakable.
The setback at Glasgow 2024
March 2, 2024 – Women’s pole vault final at the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Glasgow.
The competition is dragging, annoying. The crossbar is poorly mounted, it vibrates, it even falls on its own. It has to be repositioned multiple times. Sprint events are taking place — more waiting, the gunshot or the noise in the arena could disturb the vaulters. Long, long minutes pass with nothing happening, and no one knows when something will. There can be half an hour to an hour between jumps for one athlete, so maintaining the balance of warm-up, focus, and relaxation is far from trivial.
Margot Chevrier, the current French champion, is preparing to jump 4.65. She takes off — but mid-air, she loses her momentum.
Later she says, “My heart hurt before my leg did.”
She falls in slow motion, but sideways. Her left leg lands on the slanted edge of the mat, almost 5 meters below.
In the vault box, with a scream bursting from a broken heart and an open ankle fracture, she lies for long minutes awaiting medical care. There’s a 30-minute break in the competition until her ankle is stabilized — on the spot, without anesthesia — and she’s transported to the hospital. From just a few steps away, the other competitors watch in horror.
Pole vaulters don’t really compete against each other — they compete with themselves. Margot isn’t a rival, she’s one of them. It hits them: damn, this is an extreme sport. And damn — I’m up next. Now it is my turn.
That evening, Margot writes on her plaster cast:
“In Paris 2024, I’ll jump!”
Paris 2024. The Olympic Games, in her home country. The moment she’s been preparing for, for seven years — just five months away.
Her participation is assured based on the rankings. She is the reigning French champion. She belongs among the top jumpers in the world.
But the doctors not only question her appearance at the Olympics — they question whether she’ll ever jump again. Whether she’ll even walk.
Fighting back from injury
Margot, by the way, is a fifth-year medical student. She knows exactly what happened, and she knows her chances are close to zero — yet she decides to do everything she can.
She shares online the first bowl of ravioli she’s able to eat, the first flight of stairs she conquers (sliding proudly on her bottom), the first folded pile of laundry, her first steps with crutches.
With a smile, with humor, nicknaming her injured ankle Josie.
She jokes that her sponsor, Adidas, is saving money on her shoes — she only needs one instead of a pair. She draws the Adidas logo on the medical brace holding her ankle.
Seventeen days after the accident, she’s back in the gym.
She arrives at her first rehab session on crutches, in a cast.
By early May, she walks out of the facility on her own two feet. After the next round, she jogs out of the Capbreton rehab center.
Choosing wisely – Olympics or health?
On Facebook and Instagram, we see her first runs, her first careful jumps, the daily superhuman effort, the sunsets, the growing smiles, the hope, the fight, the realism — everything.
In an interview, she jokes with a bit of self-irony that sure, she could have gotten injured in training, in some everyday situation — but no, she had to do it live on TV, during primetime, in front of millions.
On July 7th, the news comes: she’s been conditionally named to the Paris team.
The condition: she must jump 4.50 meters before July 21st to prove she’s ready.
On July 22nd, Margot publishes a heartbreaking post with the joint decision from the French Athletics Federation and herself:
She’s not ready. She’s not going to Paris.
At 24 years old, she still has more than a decade left in elite sport — but competing at her home Olympics would carry too much risk now.
I’ll surely watch both the women’s and men’s events. And even though I’ll miss the gentle-faced French girl, I feel like this entire story is somehow more important than who reaches the podium, what place Hungary’s Klekner Hanga finishes in, how high Molly Caudery vaults at her first Olympics, than whether Katie Moon or Nina Kennedy reaches higher after their shared gold in Budapest, whether Mondo attempts the next world record, or whether EJ Obiena brings a medal home to the Philippines…
Margot’s story matters more because the Olympics are about pushing the boundaries of human potential.
About the absolute extreme. And its price.
If the Olympics didn’t exist as a goal, as a dream — where would Margot’s story be now?
The Olympics, in this case, is the meaning of life — the thing that makes it worth getting out of bed for, worth fighting from morning to night to succeed.
In life, we don’t always succeed, even when we give it everything we have.
But if we don’t give it everything, we might stray from a path that could lead us to something greater — even if it’s the longer way around.
Columbus set out for India… and found America.
Will I be happy if I have a goal, because once I reach it, everything gets easier?
No.
Nothing ever gets easier. I guarantee that. Life doesn’t work that way.
But if you choose a direction and take that long journey that almost gets you to your goal, you’ll become much stronger. You’ll overcome the obstacles better. And if you need to change course — you’ll be able to.
And even though Margot won’t be jumping on August 5th at the Stade de France, for me, she has won the Olympic spirit’s gold — no, platinum — medal.
Because after the unimaginable effort it took to recover, the even greater strength was in admitting:
“I’m not ready.”
From the cry born of pain in the vault box to the calm, though tearful statement on French TV — in every step, she showed what many of us, myself included, even with a psychology degree, struggle to believe sometimes:
That it’s worth it.
Not just for the reward at the end.
But for the road you walk to get there.
