Wonder Woman of the Week: Katerina Stefanidi
Our Wonder Woman this week is another athlete considered one of the top in her sport. Katerina Stefanidi is more than an Olympic gold medalist though, she's also a staunch and vocal advocate for athlete rights. Stefanidi was born in Athens in 1990. Throughout her childhood, Stefanidi not only competed in pole vaulting but broke multiple records between the ages of 11-15 for youth pole vaulting. After earning several awards in youth athletics, Stefanidi earned a scholarship to Stanford and later Arizona State for her Master's degree. While in college, Katerina Stefanidi earned several NCAA awards for pole vaulting and represented Greece on the international stage as a senior athlete. This included competing in the Olympics thrice- in 2012, 2016, and 2021.
While earning gold in Rio may have been her most triumphant moment, Stefanidi did not shy away from earning attention for calling out the International Olympic Committee in 2020 for making an eleventh-hour decision over postponing the Tokyo Olympics. Stefanidi publicly criticized the IOC over scheduling but also for putting athletes at risk of contracting Covid when the IOC openly expected athletes across sporting disciplines to continue preparations for the Olympics. Stefanidi also received backlash however after calling out PSAT (Greece's Pan Hellenic Sports Press Association) for awarding an NBA player with Athlete of the Year during an Olympic year which saw several Greek Olympians perform admirably without recognition as well as a Greek tennis player that did not perform anywhere near as well as other Greek women Olympians.
Katerina Stefanidi is not only one of the best pole vaulters in the sport's history, she's also one of Greece's best 21st Century athletes across disciplines. Additionally, Stefanidi has shown her willingness to call out major organizations from PSAT to the IOC for unfair practices and policies in sport. Stefanidi's dissent is not just personal either. The IOC has a long history of making political decisions that have put athletes at risk that athletes across the globe and across sports have worked to establish a voice for athletes in the Olympic system known as the Athletes' Commission. On top of that, women in sport across the world are speaking out against the double standards of award ceremonies in sport that award male athletes based on a criteria of athleticism and female athletes based on less concrete definitions of greatness. Regardless, Stefanidi's statistical record makes her one of Greece's athletes in modern history and most sports historians regard her as the greatest female athlete in the history of Greek sport.
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