“To me, the Olympics is the pinnacle of sport. I feel every athlete no matter the sport wants to be there and obviously I wanted to go, but I didn’t know pole vaulting was going to be the way I got there.”
Anicka Newell, a dual citizen of both the United States and Canada, spent her childhood growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico with the dream of becoming an Olympic level gymnast.
Newell had competed in gymnastics since she was just two years old and has always been athletically gifted.