Sondre Guttormsen tells Urheilu how you can complete your final degree at one of the world’s best universities and pole vault over six meters at the same time.
At the same time, the opportunities for Finnish athletes to invest fully in their careers aimed at success in prestigious competitions and to complete studies that will prepare them for their professional future are regularly discussed. Most recently, the dual career issue, which is important and critical for Finnish individual sports, was brought to the fore by a hurdler Viivi Lehikoinen Under the World Championships in Budapest.
Norwegian pole vaulter Sondre Guttormsen, 24, joined a very small group of Nordic pole vaulters last March. He crossed the bar set to a height of no less than six meters at the NCAA indoor championships of American universities in New Mexico. Previously, among the Nordic countries’ jumpers, only the current ME man representing Sweden had been able to do the same Armand Duplantis.
He already crossed the ghost line at the age of 18 in the European Championship finals in Berlin 2018. In the same final, Guttormsen jumped the Norwegian record 575 and finished sixth. He also represented Norway in the 110-meter hurdles at the World Junior Championships in Tampere that same summer.
Guttormsen’s academic background also makes him a particularly interesting athlete. He was born in 1999 as the first born of a family of four children in California, where the family’s then-professor father did his PhD in biosciences.
– In 2019, I received a sports scholarship to the University of California, where I studied for a year, Guttormsen recalls to Urheilu his beginnings in the US university-level sports apparatus, in the NCAA system.
But after one school year, he decided to tackle a really ambitious project. Guttormsen’s also academically gifted pole vaulting brother Simen Guttormsen had started his studies at the elite Princeton University and persuaded his brother to join him in completing a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
Princeton University, located in New Jersey, belongs to the top-level, so-called Ivy League scholarships. It ranks 15th-17th in the most recent global university comparisons. instead. Other Ivy League universities include Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Brown, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT.
76,000 euros per academic year
– The big difference to other universities is that you don’t get to the Ivy League level with sports merits, but with academic criteria. There are no separate sports scholarships, but you can get financial support for sports, says Guttormsen, whose study expenses have not been covered by the support.
An academic year at Princeton costs around 76,000 euros. Last spring and early summer were a tough time for the Norwegian.
– In order to train myself to be six meters tall and finish my degree, I had to use all my time really efficiently. Training, food, studies, rest and the same again. I’m good at that. Our family has always valued education and the effort to learn, says Guttormsen, who grew up in his hometown of Ski outside Oslo, 100 meters from the sports field.
Next, the trip continues to Austin, Texas. Guttormsen plans to pursue a master’s degree in psychology at the University of Texas. The most famous alumni athlete of Princeton’s Tigers, a varsity sports team, is a basketball legend, an ex-senator Bill Bradleywho attempted the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000.
In the outdoor track season, Guttormsen exceeded 590 at the end of April, but since the beginning of July, the best result from four races has been 542, which does not increase optimism for the World Cup qualifiers in Budapest on Wednesday.
– I have suffered from an Achilles tendon injury, but the last three weeks of training have gone very well. I think I’m in shape for at least 585, Guttormsen said.