Olympian Sandi Morris Soars, 2 Others Set Records at Chula Vista Track Meet

Last Sunday, Olympic champion Katie Moon soared 4.85 meters (15 feet 11 inches) at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center — the highest outdoor pole vault performance in the world this season.

Sandi Morris of Arkansas saw that mark.

A two-time world indoor champion and Olympic silver medalist, Morris also saw a chance to better it.

So Saturday, she drew a bead on the bar on the same runway. She came away with a jump of 4.75 meters (15-7), the No. 3 outdoor mark in the world this year.

One of her tries at a world-leading 4.86 (15-11 1/4) was close. But Morris was happy despite the miss.

“Every time people come here, they jump big, so I said: ‘All right, I need a feel-good place where the facility is going to help me.’ … So that’s what I accomplished today,” she said between taking selfies with young vaulters.

The 31-year-old former NCAA champion didn’t bring the heaviest poles that could have helped her. “You live and you learn,” she said.

She called Saturday’s competition “practice essentially. I want to feel good going into the trials,” as in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Eugene, Oregon, which start June 21.

Also excelling was Amy Haapanen, who took fourth in the hammer throw at the 2012 Olympic Trials — missing the London Games by 5 inches.

On Saturday, on the vast throwing field at the former Olympic Training Center, Haapanen completed a dramatic comeback from a rock climbing accident in the Sierra Nevadas.

Eight years after suffering a “pretty bad concussion” and spinal and back injuries while rappelling, she shattered a nearly 20-year-old American age-group record.

Her throw of 57.87 meters (189-10) bettered the age 40-44 mark of 57.08 (187-3 1/4) by Masters Hall of Famer Oneithea “Neni” Lewis.

Sacramento resident Haapanen, 40, starred at UC Santa Barbara, setting school and conference records. She also threw the 4-kilogram hammer in the 2008 and 2016 Olympic Trials.

“It’s been a really long road to basically try and get a functional body,” she said, enduring a “ton of therapy for neurological” and other issues.

But she’d always had the goal of returning to the hammer ring, where she spins the metal-ball-on-a-steel-wire four times before letting it fly.

“I didn’t want it to end the way that it did,” she said, “and so I’m really happy that I’ve been working with some really good people that have been really, really supporting me and working hard to just get me to be able to walk well again.”

When at last she was able to lift weights, she recalls having a goal of just having fun again.

For most of the season, she “couldn’t even feel my feet and legs . . . but there was enough muscle memory there.”

In recent months, she’s felt “like a normal healthy human again . . . without having second thoughts or having hesitations about whether or not I can go on a hike or whether or not I could, you know, maybe do squats in the gym.”

In July, she’ll have more fun — competing at the USATF National Masters Championships in Sacramento (“my back yard”). And in August, she’ll travel to Gothenburg, Sweden, for the World Masters Athletics Championships.

Also aiming for a European trip is 27-year-old long jumper Noelle Lambert. As in the Paris Paralympics.

In 2016, the same year Haapanen fell in the Sierras, Lambert lost her left leg in a moped accident on Martha’s Vineyard.

Now wearing a prosthesis, Lambert has branched out from the sprints. In February, having moved to Chula Vista to train with the best para athletes, she added the long jump.

And soon she broke the T63 American record. The New Hampshire native broke it again Saturday, reaching 5.22 meters (17-1 1/2) on her first attempt with a legal wind and 5.29 (17-4 1/4) on her last try with an illegal-for-records aiding breeze.

Lambert hopes her newfound skills take her to her second Paralympics (after Tokyo in 2021). She’ll compete July 18-20 in Miramar, Florida, at the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials.

She credits her coach, Chris Mack: “He’s the reason I’ve been able to jump what I’ve been jumping this season.”

No matter her result, Lambert is a survivor.

In 2022, she was seen in season 43 of “Survivor” (before being voted off on Day 19) becoming the first above-the-knee amputee to appear on the CBS show filmed in Fiji.