At 18, Ansumé de Beer knows exactly what fear feels like at the top of a pole vault runway, and this Youth Month she wants every young South African girl to know that the fear is allowed. Her message is not that the fear disappears, but that it is worth pushing through, because a young girl is “capable of so much more than she could imagine,” and one decision to “take a leap of faith can change your life forever for the better.”
“I mean, I was scared. I still get scared sometimes.”
African Pole Vault Champion, Ansumé de Beer
It is fitting advice from an athlete who has spent the past year living it. De Beer holds the African senior and under-20 pole vault titles at the same time, a rare double for a teenager.
She struck senior continental gold in Accra, Ghana, on 14 May 2026 with a clearance of 4.30m, having already taken the African under-20 crown in Abeokuta, Nigeria, the year before. Along the way she has lifted the African under-20 record in stages, from 4.16m to 4.18m and then to 4.30m. Her Accra gold came as part of a record South African women’s team that retained the continental title that week.
That 4.30m was a wall long before it was a record. “I’ve been stuck on 4.20m for a while, so when I finally jumped it, it was really great,” she says, putting the breakthrough down to a season of growth off the runway as much as on it. “My belief in myself and in Jesus, like, it grew a lot the last couple of months.”
When she cleared the height again in Germany in June, it carried a different weight. People had long told her and her parents that her “breakthroughs are just luck,” she says, and clearing it a second time “proved to everyone that, like, it isn’t just luck.” It was, she insists, the opposite: “I worked hard for this.”
Ask her why she gives herself to one of athletics’ most unforgiving events, and the answer is pure joy. “I love the feeling that I get when a pole just works perfectly,” she says, and in that instant “it feels like you’re flying.” Behind the feeling sits painstaking technical work. Right now she is focused on “getting my body straight against the pole and just turning a bit earlier” so she can clear the bar more cleanly, the small refinements that separate a good vault from a record.
The hard work has been measured in comebacks as much as clearances. De Beer speaks openly about the injuries that have repeatedly tried to halt her, and about the mindset that brings her back.
“I just have to keep believing that I will be back, and I will be back stronger.”
She is convinced that “a positive attitude can, like, completely turn things around.” Coached by Louis Nienaber between training bases in Paarl and Stellenbosch, she builds her weeks around morning gym sessions, jumping work three times a week and two endurance or sprint sessions, and earlier this year she broke a record on her very first jump back from injury.
“I earned my spot here, and I deserve to be a part of this group.”
Stepping up among the country’s senior vaulters has taught her something the medals could not. For years she has been the youngest in the field, and the lesson has been one of self-belief. The confidence that counts, she says. It is a quiet kind of growing up, learned on the runway rather than in a classroom.
What matters most to her, though, is not on the scoreboard. The Accra gold meant the most, she says, because “there’s little girls with the same dreams watching,” and she holds onto the thought that “maybe you’re changing someone’s life,” or at least giving them “a little hope.”
The step from matriculant to full-time athlete has brought the inevitable questions about a backup plan, but she refuses to carry them as a burden. “It doesn’t feel like work, because I know I’m building onto my dream, which I’ve wanted for so long.”
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That sense of responsibility shapes how she speaks to the next girl who might pick up a pole. There are, she points out, “not many pole vault girls competing” in South Africa, and she is honest about why. It is “very unusual and it’s hard to get right,” she says, and starting is daunting. But the reward, in her telling, is enormous, a sport that “can open so many doors for you” if a young athlete is brave enough to begin.
Her eyes are already on what comes next. In her first international season she has competed across Germany, Spain and Estonia, building, in her own words, “a name for myself.” It is her first year competing internationally, a run she sees less as a results chase than a chance to “build trust in myself” and reach for higher bars.
The road points toward the World Athletics Under-20 Championships in Oregon, where she has set a clear target: a win, “if it’s in God’s plan, and possibly a 4.50m.” Beyond that lies the dream she has held as long as she can remember. “It’s been my dream to go to the Olympics,” she says.
“Even just going to the final would mean the world to me.”
For now, just one after Youth Day, her words are aimed squarely at the girl still deciding whether to begin. Take “the step into the unknown,” she says, and “it can change so many things for you.” Above all she wants to be remembered as someone who “never gave up, no matter the circumstance,” who kept her “eyes up” through every setback. It sounds like a slogan until you remember she has lived every word of it.
Main Photo Caption: Ansumé de Beer, South Africa’s 18-year-old pole vault sensation, holds the African senior and under-20 titles at the same time and carries a Youth Month message of faith and courage to young girls across the country. All Photo: Andre Graewe
Photo 2 Caption: De Beer has lifted the African under-20 record in stages, from 4.16m to 4.30m, across a single breakthrough season. Photo: Supplied
Photo 3 Caption: Back from repeated injury and stronger each time, De Beer credits her faith and relentless positivity for her rise. Photo: Andre Graewe
Photo 4 Caption: De Beer sets her sights on the World Athletics Under-20 Championships in Oregon in her debut international season. Photo: Supplied
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