Every pole vaulter’s greatest fear is missing the mat. 
 Liam Georgilopoulos lived this nightmare last December when a botched dismount saw him crash into the concrete, leaving him with a shattered wrists and two months in a cast that stretched from fingers to shoulder.  
 However, a 5m fall doesn’t seem so dramatic for a guy who spends every spare minute jumping out of planes at 5000m.  
 An impromptu return to competition for last month’s National Championships in Adelaide saw him finish sixth with a best jump of 4.95, well short of his best.
 Ten days later he showed the rust was well and truly gone as he put in a stunning performance to win the Uni Sport Nationals and break a long-standing record held by Australian Olympic Gold medallist Steve Hooker.    
 Georgilopoulos lives the double life of athlete and student, studying a Bachelor of Property at Bond University. 
 This adrenalin junkie dreams of flying and has a serious addiction to skydiving – regularly using summer’s daylight savings to dart across the border for a few hours before university. 
 His sporting career began in gymnastics and when he transitioned those skills to pole vault the results soon followed. 
 He has been on the national team for Junior Worlds and earned a bronze medal at the Australian Nationals. 
 The 20-year-old assumed this season was going to be a write-off after his accident. The two months in the cast were followed by a brutal four weeks of rehabilitation. But as his strength returned, he began to see opportunity.  
 “We were at training, I jumped and missed the mat,” he said.
 “I landed on the concrete and broke my wrist. 
 “I was going to write off the rest of the season and just build up into the next one instead, but I hadn’t jumped in over two months, I just wanted to get back out there and try my luck. 
 “So I went back to training, I worked hard and got back to decent enough form to start jumping high again. It was great and my coach was pretty happy.”
 Breaking the record held by Beijing Gold medallist Hooker, convinced Georgilopoulos he is on the right track to gaining his goal of making the LA 2028 Olympics. 
 “It feels pretty good to hold the new record,” he said.  
 “I’m roughly the same age now as Steve was when he jumped that too. To come back from being in a cast to jumping an equal PB and breaking his record really showed me what my efforts can achieve.”