Greek pole vaulting great Katerina Stefanidi has been a staple of the Millrose Games for over a decade, competing six times and winning four straight titles from 2015 to 2018. On February 1st, at the 118th edition of the Millrose Games, the 2016 Olympic champion will return to The Armory for her first competition in 511 days.

Stefanidi and her husband, Mitchell, welcomed their first child in June. Pregnancy delayed what they had planned to be her final competitive season, and August’s European Championships proved too powerful an attractor to ignore. The 35-year-old has collected two golds and three silvers from the last five editions of that meet, and keeping that streak alive is her main motivator in 2026.

Stefanidi sat down with CITIUS MAG to give insights on her return to training, the inherent challenges that come from blending motherhood with the life of an elite athlete, and adjusting expectations when she knows things aren’t going to line up perfectly. The following interview has been edited lightly for clarity:

CITIUS MAG: It’s been a while since we’ve seen you last—September of 2024—but I know you’re gearing up for what should be an exciting 2026 season. How are you doing right now?

Katerina Stefanidi: I’m doing okay! I gave birth in June. To go back a little, I wanted 2025 to be my last season, then I got pregnant, then I was like, ‘No, I’m gonna come back.’ But like we said, coming back from pregnancy and birth—I actually had a C-section so that made things a little harder. We didn’t want to push anything physically and mentally, because pole vault is a little bit tough. You can’t just rush things.

My goal was outdoors. We have European Championships and I’ve been on the podium at outdoor European Championships [every year] since 2014, so that’s a big goal for me to be on the podium. We had said if I’m feeling okay, I could do some meets indoors, maybe even try to see if I could get close to qualifying for indoor Worlds, and that’s kind of where we are. I’m almost there, but not quite.

I just realized that, having a child, you’re never going to feel ready, I was never going to feel ready to compete until I put myself out there. Already, just knowing I’m going to Millrose in a few weeks has boosted my practices a little bit. So I’m hoping going to Millrose actually and competing and having all that adrenaline back is going to help me if I do a couple more meets in February.

You’re going to be competing at your seventh Millrose Games, and you’re a four-time champion at that meet. What makes Millrose so special and why are you choosing that to be your first meet back in 16 months?

Millrose is by far my favorite indoor meet and definitely in my top three of indoor and outdoor meets. If you looked into the history, I think with the exception of one year, I’ve jumped my indoor season’s best or indoor PR—I jumped 4.90m or over 16 feet for the first time. I always jump well there. I don’t know if it’s the visual or the crowd or the runway, you never know with these things, but I always jump well there and have one of my best performances of the year. I just thought, ‘What better place to pick it back up after a year-and-a-half?’

I did a similar interview with Katie Moon last year announcing that she would be competing at Millrose, and she talked about how special that runway itself is. What is it about that runway that makes it so good?

I don’t know, to be quite honest. I might be kind of making this up, but in my mind, the way the runway’s built, it’s not quite track on concrete and it’s not quite a raised runway, there’s a little bounce to it. There’s something between a real concrete outdoor track and a raised runway. I don’t do very good at raised runways, most people do better at them, but I don’t get that benefit. But I think maybe I do at Millrose, that little bit extra bounce but not so much I can’t control it.

I think it’s a great visual. The pit is awesome, the way it’s set up is great. Pole vaulters are weird about these things. And I’ll say the crowd. I love real meets, I don’t enjoy street vault so much, but it feels like this in-between where I’m at a real track meet with other things happening around me, but the crowd is right there. Especially in The Armory, in the higher part, it feels like we can touch them while we’re in the air.

It’s obviously very exciting that you became a mother this summer, but in the almost year-and-a-half since you competed, when did you start missing the thrill of competition?

It’s exactly what you said. I love pole vault. I think I will always play pole vault and grab a pole and jump a little, but I think I love competing the most. Throughout my career, this is what made me good—I like to win, I like to compete. I always preferred going to a competition with someone who could push me versus be the best by a foot, that was not interesting.

So I’m excited to go back into that. I feel like I’ve done very well physically and mentally coming back from pregnancy, but I feel like I said, until you put yourself back out there and push yourself, and lose and not do great, I’m at the point where this is what I need now. This is what I miss the most for sure, competing.

I saw on your Instagram that you posted a video going down the runway in August and put in the caption, ‘See you in Tokyo!’ Having a C-section probably adds some complications to that comeback, but when did you start really getting into serious training again?

Maybe November, but even still, we’re not training as much as we ever did before, but that was always kind of the plan. I have the technical part, I know how to pole vault, so I don’t feel like I need to be spending so much time on technique and I don’t need to be taking so many jumps. I am 35, I’m going to be almost 36 by the time of Millrose, so for us it was very important that if I’m going to keep jumping and even trying to make it to [the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics], I need to be healthy. This has been the hardest part for me the last four or five years.

November is kind of when we started ramping it up a little and having more of a real schedule versus me being like, ‘Oh, I feel like jumping today!’ Even still, I feel like we’re not training nearly as much, but I feel like physically I’m almost there. It’s the mental part that is kind of behind. I trained throughout pregnancy, I lifted quite a bit. It was about five weeks after giving birth I grabbed a pole and took a jump at like two meters. After that, everything came very easy. No pushing, when I was ready I would go to the next poles or the next run.

Given that you’re able to acknowledge that the training and mental side of vaulting isn’t where you’d hope it would be leading into an indoor season, how are you approaching goal-setting for 2026 when you know there’s so many added challenges?

First, you don’t know what the challenges are. The baby is constantly changing, practice is constantly changing because of the baby, so I think it’s hard to really make plans. We’re kind of taking it day-by-day and trying to make it work.

To answer your question more about goal-setting, for sure, European Championships, outdoors, is my biggest goal. I feel like I have so much time until then that I feel like I can be at least at a competitive level for a medal. It is a little hard with us thinking I wasn’t going to do indoors. We’ve never really done something like this before and it is really hard for us to set goals.

What we’re trying to do right now, and to be honest we’re trying to do the same thing at practice to not put pressure on me, is that we’re not thinking about height and we’re not thinking about poles. We’re just talking about smoothness in the jump and consistency. If I can take nine out of 10 jumps and make them look good, I’ll be back for sure, by outdoors. This is even why indoor Worlds is on my mind, because things are going very well. Not so much about height right now, but if I can come to Millrose and take every attempt, go to the next pole when I need to and take the exact same jump, I think I’ll have a pretty good day.

Out of 10 jumps in training, how many of those would you say look or feel good right now?

Our goal is eight out of 10, but I have practices where I’d take 9 or 9.5 out of 10, let’s say. I don’t take 10 jumps, obviously, I take 20 to 30 jumps. The shorter the run and the smaller the pole, the more consistent I can be. Now that we are pushing back a little to longer runs and longer poles going into Millrose and the indoor season, it can be a little harder to be this consistent. The way we’ve made these changes has been with the number one goal to be consistent and then make these changes, and I think we’ve done a very good job keeping me confident.

It’s going to be a challenge to medal at Europeans at 36, for sure, but I think we’ve done a very good job. I feel at a very good level with practice, even with us starting in November.

So far, in your experience of coming back from pregnancy, would you say it’s harder than coming back from bouts of injuries that plagued you in 2021 and 2024?

I’ve never had an injury that had to really have to take months off. I’ve had an injury bad enough that I could still run through, which was probably worse, to be honest. I will say they’re very different. I gained a lot of weight in pregnancy so that was a new factor that we never had to deal with before. I do think that taking a full nine or 10 months off of pole vaulting was good for me. It motivated me again. Pole vaulters, especially with every added year, we get more and more crazy with different things. Having the break has kept me away from weird mental blocks right now and kept me more confident, which is very opposite from coming back from an injury.

In that sense, very different. I feel way more confident and mentally there right now compared to coming back from an injury. There’s also different motivation. Coming back from an injury, you almost have a comeback year and want to prove something. I don’t feel this way anymore. I’ve achieved enough in my career that I’m very happy, and now I feel like I’m doing what I love. It’s hard, of course, having been at the top to not set high goals and want to win and all that, but I do think that if we make the right decisions and don’t rush me, that I will be there outdoors.

Definitely, well it’s very exciting that we’ll be seeing you back at Millrose, Katarina. Thanks for taking some time today and we can’t wait to see you back on the runway!

Thanks so much.

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Tickets to the 118th Millrose Games are on sale now at MillroseGames.org.

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