Denbow defends U Sports high jump gold

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This article was published 11/03/2025 (191 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lara Denbow can still count her national high jump titles on one hand — barely.

One day, the multi-time gold medallist set the bar at five Canadian track and field championships. On Saturday, the Neepawa product cleared it as the back-to-back U Sports winner.

“It was really satisfying,” said the University of Manitoba Bisons jumper. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time and I’ve been hoping for a reason to practise.”

In the past, Denbow has explained the challenge elite high jumpers face regarding motivation. Like in many sports, growth is seldom linear.

She skyrocketed to stardom and cleared the bar at 1.70 metres to win the under-16 Legion national title in Brandon in 2018. Denbow took the U18 title at 1.72 the following year.

Denbow added a U20 title at open nationals a few years back. Then in 2024, she set her personal best of 1.78m to claim her first university crown at the U of M in 2024. She nearly matched on Saturday but still won at 1.75.

Denbow is one of the best jumpers in the country but still has to push through seemingly insurmountable plateaus. It takes a great deal of resolve to pour hours into training without seeing easily quantifiable growth.

But Denbow had new motivation.

She moved from her bachelor’s degree program into pharmacy this year, feeling a big uptick in demand on the academic side.

“There’s something to be said about doing something for a long time versus trying to do something once and right,” Denbow said. “Even between my studies and athletics, I’ve been trying hard to put my best effort forward in a way that’s really productive.

“It’s been really hard to balance my time between the two things and I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.”

On Saturday in Windsor, Ont., she proved it.

Denbow’s closest competition was her teammate and multi-event phenom Madisson Lawrence, who’d already climbed the podium in the pentathlon on Thursday.

Denbow said she knew it’d be close so she locked in and tried to stay mistake-free as long as possible. That was the difference as she cleared each height up to 1.72m on her first try, while Lawrence took all three attempts.

They were the only two left, with Denbow jumping first each time. Both missed twice at 1.75 before Denbow made a little technique tweak.

“In high jump, this sounds like a silly thing to say, but sometimes you don’t jump high enough,” she chuckled.

“You actually go out to the side more. I really just transferred my energy into vertical speed instead of going more diagonal. I was just trying to work on a good takeoff and I was able to execute that.

“When I went over 1.75, she was going (over) too.”

Lawrence did, extending the fight to one more height.

They had the same thought when they came up short on all three tries.

“We both hugged Ming together,” Denbow said of Bisons jumps coach Mingpu Wu.

“It was pretty awesome to win it with Madi because I’ve been jumping alongside Madi for — I’m going to age myself here — but six years.

“It was really competitive but that’s how it is when we train together too. It’s a friendship but it’s a competitive friendship and it’s very fun.”

Denbow has two years of U Sports eligibility left and three years to go in her pharmacy degree.

But first, she’s fixated on the Canada Summer Games.

She’ll compete in the high jump, of course, but brought triple jump back to her repertoire this year and hopes to make a run at more than one medal in St. John’s, N.L.

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