Sam Kendricks quest for another Olympic medal is very much alive after his performance on Saturday, Aug 3 in Paris. A 5.75 vault placed him in the elite 12 athletes to move forward to the Olympic final round on Monday.

Kendricks will face pole vaulting world champion and defending gold medalist, Duplantis of Sweden. The defending silver medalist, Christopher Nielsen from the US fell just short with a 5.6 vault and did not qualify to move forward to the finals.

Winning an Olympic medal at the Paris games would be a sweet reward for Kendricks after testing positive for Covid sidelined his chance to defend his Olympic silver medal at the Tokyo games.