High jumper Nicola Olyslagers scribbles in her ‘little book of gold’. Now other athletes are copying her

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Nicola Olyslagers calls it her little book of gold.

When she clears a height, the willowy Olyslagers, who smiles as quickly and easily as she clears high jump bars, beams and runs over to her bag with the urgency of someone who has to dash an idea down before it leaves her head. She picks up a little exercise book, sits and quickly scribbles in it in the middle of a full athletics stadium.

Nicola Olyslagers in action during qualifying for the high jump at the world athletics championships.Credit: Getty Images

It’s not just what she reads in it that helps, though that does help. It is the process of writing in it that is as essential to her routine now as the nuggets of information she collects from it at critical moments in competition.

“The notebook is my training diary and my sport psych and I came up with it in 2019 to bring it into the competition just so I know which areas I did really well in and which areas I need to work on, and I just write one thing down from my coach because you can only focus on one thing at a time when you are jumping, you can’t focus on 30 things, and it’s really simple,” Olyslagers said.

“Once I write it down, it’s a bit like as soon as it is on a piece of paper you don’t have to put it into your mind and [can] just think about other things. So, I have been doing that, and it has been working really well.”

The process helps her reset from a good or bad jump and blinkers out the crowd and other thoughts.

Nicola Olyslagers reads her notebook during the competition at the Tokyo Olympics, where she claimed silver.Credit: Getty Images

“I do go back and read it, but the process is more powerful than what is actually on the piece of paper because it gives me that stage where I could have just jumped the world record or missed my first attempt at my starting height, it’s the same process. I will always go back and write on it. It gives me that kind of consistency that no matter what, I can rely on that, that I will do that,” she said.

“The emotions of when you get a good jump, and you are so excited and fired up, to then come down after that and focus and go, OK, you have three more attempts at the next height now. It’s a good system. And it’s been pretty cool because a few other girls on the circuit I can see them with their notebooks out now, and it’s like, OK, I’ve started something.”

Examples of pages from the notebook that Australian high jumper Nicola Olyslagers scribbles in during competition.

Indeed, several women in the pole vault at the world athletics championships in Budapest had notebooks they were scrawling in between jumps on Wednesday night.

Olyslagers opened the pages of her book to this masthead. A lot of it is, well, gobbledygook. It looks partly like a mathematics equation, part coaching manual, part catalogue of self-help mottos or Biblical quotes. Some pages have small drawings or doodles in the margins.

“I actually reflect a bit more on what I have done outside the competition that I have written down, like my training sessions. You can learn something every day. For example, one thing I wrote down in my book when I was jumping on this particular surface, I said, ‘Just make sure you put a bit more effort in because this surface doesn’t carry you as fast’. I wrote that down, and I was halfway through a training session and nothing was going to plan, and I opened up my notebook, looked up, and thought ‘Oh that’s right’. Then I did it and I made every single jump, and it was perfect.

“It’s the kind of [advice] future-you will thank you for.

“Ideally, this book is about my journey and what I have learnt along the way and when I go into comps, world champs, I will be out there for hours, and you can’t always be switched on, so I can always go down and flick a page and see a lesson I learnt, or the day I go 2.02 [metres] and how excited I was and my reflections about that or a verse that really inspires me from the Bible. Or my coach telling me, ‘Hey make sure you focus on this’ in a comp.”

Olyslagers thinks of it as her school cheat sheet, notes she can take with her into an exam.

Whether it is the writing part, or the reading part, whatever it is about the book is working for her.

Olyslagers entered the world championships as the top-ranked athlete this year. Of the top 10 heights that high jumpers have cleared this year, Olyslagers has six of them. She has won nine of the 10 competitions she has entered in the past year.

Ukrainian Yaroslava Mahuchikh might be the No.1-ranked jumper going into Budapest, but Olyslagers is the jumper to beat.

“My hopes and anticipation is I could jump a new personal best which would put me in very good stead to be on the top of the podium,” Olyslagers said. Her PB is 2.02m.

“If the conditions are willing, I don’t even know how high I can jump, I think that is the exciting thing. I just want to keep going, and I know the best women in the world are going to be in their best shape, too, and when one of us jumps high, we all jump high, it’s that kind of sport.”

One of those other best women in the world is fellow Australian Eleanor Patterson.

Teammates Nicola Olyslagers (left) and Eleanor Patterson.Credit: Hollie Adams

At the past three major world athletics high jump events, Olyslagers and Patterson have featured in the medals.

Olyslagers won Olympic silver in Tokyo in 2021, when she jumped 2.02m. A year later, Patterson won gold at the worlds in Oregon, also jumping 2.02m.

After that, at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, Patterson won silver with 1.96m. Olyslagers pulled out of the final injured.

“That’s something we have in our tool box is we can perform when it counts,” Olyslagers said.

“I had a really good 2021, she had an amazing 2022 and now it’s 2023. There is the potential for both of us to go and to potentially both break an Australian record and go even higher. Why not?”

Patterson is the dark horse here, which is strange to say of the reigning world champion. She is ranked ninth because she snapped a bone in her foot in February and has barely been seen all year.

Olyslagers and Patterson both made efficient work of their qualifying for Monday morning’s (AEST) final. Patterson only needed three jumps to clear every height on the way to 1.92m.

Olyslagers said after qualifying: “It was good, I wrote a lot of notes in my notebook, and one big thing I am taking away from this is that the surface is very reactive, so I need to have that balance between not putting too much effort in, but not being too relaxed, trying to balance peace and passion.”

Patterson was pleased to qualify in three jumps, saying it was satisfying because she came in carrying the mantle, or burden, of defending champion.

“It’s there; at the same time, you can pick and choose whether it’s a backpack and weigh yourself down or not. I think at the start of the year, I probably hadn’t processed the fact that I was world champ yet but having the opportunity to sit on the sidelines with injury helped me to process it in a different way.”

The two women share a PB at 2.02m, and both have won national titles and won medals in major world events, but they have not yet shared the podium on the world stage which is something that excites Olyslagers.

“I don’t think it’s been done for a field event [two Australians on the podium together] but that is ideally what we want. We want Australia as this high jump nation and the girls and guys coming up after us, and our ceiling will be their floor,” she says.

“I feel we are changing history with how field especially has been going for Australia lately. It is exciting – I would love to have two Australians on the podium.

“It doesn’t discredit your success if someone else joins you on there, it doubles it. I was genuinely excited to see her do it [win the world championship] because it’s possible.”

That’s a good thought. That’s one to write in a book of gold.

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