Vashti Cunningham

After establishing a personal best mark of 2.0 meters in 2019, high jumper Vashti Cunningham is ready to raise the bar. First stop: 2.02 meters which Cunningham accomplished on May 29, 2021. With this mark, Cunningham took over the world outdoor lead for 2021 and moved to No. 4 on the all-time U.S. performer list. Tomorrow, the world: the women’s world record in the discipline, at 2.09 meters, has stood since Bulgarian jumper Stefka Kostadinova’s triumph way back in 1987.

Coached by her father, former NFL quarterback (and current Las Vegas Raiders Team Chaplain) Randall Cunningham, she burst onto the international track and field scene in 2015 with a win at the Pan American Junior Championships, clearing 1.96 meters. In 2016 she won the World Indoor Championships at 1.96 meters and the U.S.A. Indoor Track and Field Championships at 1.99 meters (the current American Junior record), and finished 2nd at the U.S. Olympic Trials at 1.97 meters. She finished 13th in her Olympic debut in Rio in 2016 (at age 18, she was the youngest U.S. Track and Field athlete to make the team since 1980) and has been on a rampage ever since. She turned pro in 2016, declining college scholarships in both volleyball and track and field to accept an offer from Nike.

She attributes her success to her dad’s coaching; her years of ballet study with her mom, former Dance Theatre of Harlem ballerina Felicity de Jager Cunningham; her God-given natural abilities and physique (she’s a lithe 6’1”), and her lifelong determination to keep up with her older brother Randall Cunningham Jr., also star high jumper. Cunningham balances her athletic career with passions for fashion design, photography, and modelling.