“I love the show, I live in the show,” says Bo Kanda Lita Baehre, “and there are few disciplines that are as showworthy as the pole vault.” And anyone who ever doubted that only had to look at the sparsely occupied Olympic Stadium at the weekend.
Lita Baehre managed to get the few thousand people present on Saturday morning to cheer so much that for a moment they thought they were at a lavish summer party. He danced across the mat as he completed 5.70m, spreading his arms after sailing over 5.80, a height unmatched by any of his competitors. After mastering 5.85 meters, four centimeters above the old record, he strutted down the track like a model on a blue footbridge. At 5.90 meters, he tensed his muscles and jumped through the midday heat for so long that he was forced to kneel shortly afterwards, and why not: 5.90 meters, only seven jumpers have achieved that in Germany.
Later, after the cameras had caught all the antics and muscle poses, Lita Baehre spoke softly about his personal supporting program. “It’s just great to give back to people that they’re having fun, that I’m having fun with them, that it’s not going to be a boring competition,” he said. One could understand his jubilation as part of his jump, but dismiss him only as a showman? That doesn’t do him justice either.
Pole vaulting is a world “in which you can let off steam so much,” says Lita Baehre
Rather, he is a showman with a sensitive, fine-spirited side. Someone who, in the first moment, talks about how his faith helps him to be more balanced, not to rush things, to keep hope. In the other second, he ponders the Russian war of aggression (“I find it incredibly sad that innocent people, especially children, who have their whole lives ahead of them, have to worry”). Or about how his mother raised him and his brother alone, telling them not to rest on their laurels and not to be dragged down by comments at school or by competitors who only saw the antics and Lita Baehre perceived as arrogant.
Born to be a show person: Bo Kanda Lita Baehre in Berlin.
(Photo: Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
In any case, it’s an exciting marriage: The 23-year-old and the pole vault, a world of artists and show people, “in which you can let off steam so much,” says Lita Baehre, and at the same time is so complex that even magic students sometimes lose the art . If sport has taught him one thing over the past few years, Lita Baehre said at the weekend, it’s “patience”.
In 2016, at the age of 17, he won silver at the U-18 European Championships, a year later his first German outdoor title for adults with 5.60 meters. The exciting question with these highly gifted people is usually how they deal with it when they get stuck the first time, but Lita Baehre was in good hands there too. He has been training at the base in Leverkusen for seven years, with national coach Christine Adams, and even if by no means all great talents move to these academies, Lita Baehre once said that he quickly got along with Adams.
In Torben Blech, third on Saturday behind last year’s winner Oleg Zernikel (both 5.70), he has one of the strongest competitors in the training group. And the most important thing, said Lita Baehre in Berlin, is the patience that the trainer exemplifies. That she sometimes let him jump from a shorter run because his body wasn’t ready for the great heights. Not yet.
With 5.90 meters, Lita Baehre is now number three in the world
And if things continue like they are now: “Then you appreciate the successes more,” said Lita Baehre. Then everything flows together, run-up, take-off, tumbling up on the pole, which he can do better than almost anyone else; he knows what he’s doing without thinking about it. Lita Baehre’s mood also often makes it appear as someone who looks older than 23 years, when he says things like: “This six-meter barrier is only so magical because that’s how people talk about it.” He sees it more as a way station, it has long been higher internationally, especially with Armand Duplantis, who is currently trying to 6.21 meters. That doesn’t frustrate him at all, said Lita Baehre now: “If someone is better, it should be the incentive in competitive sport not to let it get you down.”
It’s always a problem with forecasts, in pole vaulting anyway. But it cannot be ruled out that things will suddenly go faster for Lita Baehre than many last thought. At 5.90 meters, he is now number three in the world, “and based on my skills, where I am now, I am definitely closer to being involved internationally”. He says: closer than 2019 when he finished fourth in the World Cup in Doha. He doesn’t see it as a hindrance that the World Cup and European Championship are coming up within a few weeks: “It won’t be easy, but you can also use it as an opportunity. I think two championships are great.” Two chances, also on the next show.