Manuela Blanco Miguélez

Spanish Pole Vaulter | Club Ourense Atletismo

At just 19 years old, Manuela Blanco Miguélez has already established herself as one of the most promising young pole vaulters in Spain. Born on 9 December 2006 in Ourense, the capital city of the province of the same name in Galicia, she competes for the Sanysec–Club Ourense Atletismo and holds a personal best of 3.95 metres — a mark that earned her a World Athletics score of 944 points and currently places her inside the top 500 women’s pole vaulters in the world. She is registered with World Athletics under athlete code 15064842. What makes that figure all the more striking is its context: it was set indoors, in February 2025, when she was still just 18 years old and competing in the Sub-20 age category. Since then, she has added a national outdoor title and a podium finish at the Sub-23 level, confirming that her early trajectory is not a statistical accident but a genuine, steadily accelerating rise through the ranks of Spanish athletics.

Roots: Ourense and the Galician Athletic Tradition

Ourense is a city of roughly 100,000 people situated in the interior of Galicia, Spain’s northwestern autonomous community, known for its Roman bridge over the Miño River and its natural thermal springs. It is not the first place one thinks of when imagining a Spanish athletics hotbed, but the city has produced a notable string of competitive athletes across generations, from middle-distance runners to jumpers to throwers. The Club Ourense Atletismo, Blanco’s home club, has long been one of the pillars of Galician athletics, and its women’s section in particular has grown into a genuine force in recent years, winning three consecutive regional indoor club titles through the 2025–26 season.

Blanco grew up in the provincial capital itself — she is described in local sports coverage as “la capitalina,” the city girl, as distinct from her teammates who hail from the wider province. Her surname combination, Blanco Miguélez, is unmistakably Galician in character, and her story is rooted in the culture and athletics infrastructure of Ourense. The Pistas Cubiertas de Expourense — the indoor athletics facility at the city’s fairgrounds, which has hosted major national championships including the 60th Spanish Indoor Championships in 2024 — serves as a home track that has helped shaped her development. Few young athletes have the luxury of a nationally certified indoor track in their hometown, and for a pole vaulter, that access to a full-specification runway and standards year-round is a meaningful advantage.

The specifics of how she first found the pole vault are not widely documented in public record, but her registration history with Galician athletics confirms she was competing in the Sub-20 category as early as the 2022–23 season, indicating she was active in competitive athletics by at least 15 or 16 years of age. Given the club’s robust junior program, it is reasonable to conclude that she came up through Club Ourense Atletismo’s youth ranks, gravitating toward the pole vault at a young age and progressing quickly enough to enter regional Sub-20 competition before reaching her late teens.

Early Competition: First Steps on the National Stage

By February 2023, the 16-year-old Blanco was competing in the Campeonato de Galicia Sub-20 de Pista Cubierta, the regional indoor championships for athletes under 20 years old, held on her home track at Expourense in Ourense. Her appearance in the entry lists confirms she was registered with Club Ourense Atletismo and competing in the pole vault, already visible enough within the regional circuit to be considered among the contenders. That early exposure to the structured championship format — with its progression from regional to national level — would prove foundational to the trajectory that followed.

Through 2023 and into 2024, Blanco continued to develop within the Galician and national junior circuit. The first significant public milestone came at the 60th Spanish Indoor Championships in February 2024, held at Expourense itself. The fact that a 17-year-old was selected to compete in the absolute national championships — rubbing shoulders with the established senior elite of Spanish athletics — speaks to the speed of her development. She competed in the pole vault while local media noted her presence as one of only three Galician athletes competing at home, describing her as a “joven pertiguista” (young pole vaulter) born in 2006 who would be experiencing the national stage for the first time. At that same meet, a wind-assisted 60 metres time of 8.20 seconds was recorded by her, registering in the World Athletics database as her 60m personal best (marked as not legal due to wind). The combination of pole vault competition and incidental sprint ability is typical for elite vaulters, who depend heavily on speed in their approach run.

Later in 2024, in July, Blanco vaulted 3.85 metres at a Club Championships qualifier in Málaga — a significant mark for a 17-year-old Sub-20 athlete. That performance contributed to Club Ourense Atletismo’s national club team qualification, confirming she was already pulling meaningful competitive weight for the club at a national level.

Breakthrough: The 3.95m Personal Best and Sub-20 National Glory

The winter season of 2024–25 was when Blanco’s career took a decisive step forward. On 23 February 2025, competing at the prestigious Gallur indoor facility in Madrid, she cleared 3.95 metres — a jump that became her personal best and remains her highest recorded performance. The World Athletics score of 944 points for that height underscores its quality: it placed her among the top entries in the Sub-20 category for the Spanish season, and the performance attracted immediate national attention within the junior athletics community. The RFEA (Real Federación Española de Atletismo) listed her as the top-seeded female pole vaulter for the upcoming National Sub-20 Indoor Championships in Salamanca, with her 3.95 metres leading the rankings ahead of all other U20 competitors.

She was also entered in the absolute National Indoor Championships, where she competed as one of the more established junior presences in the field. In an article previewing the championships, she was described as one of the top junior prospects in Spanish athletics, a “best promise” of the province, competing alongside the national senior elite.

The summer of 2025 brought outdoor glory. At the Campeonato de España Sub-20 de Atletismo al Aire Libre, held in Villafranca de los Barros in the province of Badajoz, Blanco arrived as a clear favourite and delivered accordingly. The competition itself tested her composure: she passed her opening height on her first two attempts and required a third — the last available — before finally clearing 3.65 metres and securing herself in the competition. From there, she was in command. She cleared 3.75 metres on her first attempt, which proved sufficient for the gold medal. She then pushed to 3.90 metres, producing three fouls and ending her competition at that height — a mark she would equal the following month at the absolute level. The championship win, as reported by local Galician media, was described in terms that captured both the drama of that opening scare and the quality of the eventual result: a title earned with grit as much as talent.

The official RFEA results for the championships confirmed the result: Manuela Blanco, Ourense Atletismo, champion of Spain at Under-20 level in the pole vault, with a winning height of 3.75 metres.

Testing the Absolute Level: Senior Spanish Championships

Within weeks of her Sub-20 gold medal, Blanco was competing at the senior end of the spectrum. At the Campeonato de España Absoluto de Atletismo al Aire Libre in Tarragona in August 2025, she competed against the full depth of Spanish women’s pole vaulting. She cleared 3.90 metres — equalling her earlier outdoor attempt — and finished sixth overall. The bronze medal went to an athlete who cleared 4.10 metres, placing the podium 20 centimetres away. Sixth place among the best senior vaulters in Spain, at 18 years of age and just weeks after winning her junior national title, is a result that any honest observer would describe as highly encouraging.

Local Ourense coverage of that result captured the mood well: “Blanco se quedó cerca del podio” — Blanco came close to the podium. The framing was of an athlete who had competed seriously with the senior elite and found herself genuinely proximate to the medals, rather than a junior making up numbers. That distinction matters.

Club Loyalty and the Ourense Atletismo Environment

Throughout her career, Blanco has remained with Club Ourense Atletismo, which competes under the title sponsorship of Sanysec and is one of the most successful clubs in Galician athletics. The women’s team has won the Campeonato Gallego de Pista Cubierta (Galician Indoor Club Championships) for at least three consecutive seasons through early 2026, a run of dominance built on depth across field events and middle distance. Blanco has been a significant contributor to that success, consistently winning or podium-finishing in the pole vault across the club-format competitions.

In the January 2026 Galician indoor club championships, she cleared 3.75 metres to help Ourense Atletismo retain the regional women’s title with 89 points — a comfortable margin over rivals S.G. Pontevedra (78) and At. Feminino Celta (66). The following month, at the Campeonato Gallego Absoluto de Pista Corta held on her home track at Expourense, she won the absolute regional indoor pole vault title with a clearance of 3.80 metres, first securing victory at 3.65 before confirming it with a clean first-attempt clearance at 3.80. Days after that, at a local Ourense athletics meet that brought together club athletes from across the province, she again won the pole vault at 3.80 metres, described as a “recent national sub-23 medallist” — a label she had earned the previous weekend.

Sub-23 Breakthrough and the 2025–26 Indoor Season

On 7–8 February 2026, Blanco competed at the Campeonato de España Sub-23 de Pista Cubierta in Sabadell — her first Sub-23 national championship, competing now in the age group above Sub-20 for the first time. She cleared 3.72 metres to claim the bronze medal. The competition was won by Naiara Pérez with a championship record of 4.30 metres; silver went to Marta Mohedo with 3.77 metres. Blanco’s 3.72 on that day came after clean clearances of 3.62 and 3.72 — a composed performance in a field where all three medalists were separated by just 10 centimetres across the gold, silver, and bronze positions. Coverage from Club Ourense Atletismo noted that she had arrived in Sabadell ranked second in the national Sub-23 rankings that season with a mark of 3.86 metres, trailing only the eventual winner. The bronze was a solid result given the circumstances, and it confirmed her status as one of the established contenders in the Sub-23 category.

Blanco then turned to the 62nd Spanish Absolute Indoor Championships in Valencia on 27 February–2 March 2026, competing in the senior absolute field. In a difficult competition, she registered a single valid clearance at 3.60 metres and was eliminated at 3.80, finishing ninth — a result that reflected the additional step up in difficulty compared to her Sub-23 environment, where she had stood on the podium just days earlier. Ninth in the absolute indoor nationals is not a crisis of any kind; it is the result of an athlete who is still developing and finding her competitive ceiling relative to the senior elite.

Personal Bests at a Glance

Major Results Summary

World Rankings and Context

Blanco’s personal best of 3.95 metres currently ranks her approximately 470th in the world among women’s pole vaulters on the World Athletics ranking list. In the context of a 19-year-old, that figure is best understood not as a ceiling but as a starting point. The women’s pole vault world record stands at 5.00 metres (set by Yelena Isinbayeva), and Spain’s national record of 4.56 metres was set by Naroa Agirre in 2007. Among active senior Spanish vaulters, heights of 4.20–4.50 metres define the national podium level. Blanco is still 25–55 centimetres short of that threshold — a substantial gap, but one that is entirely normal for a 19-year-old athlete who has only recently entered the Sub-23 age group.

For further context: the Sub-23 national championship that awarded her bronze in February 2026 was won with a championship-record height of 4.30 metres. The gap between her 3.72 metres on that day and the winner’s 4.30 metres is real and should not be papered over. But it is also a gap that develops-talent athletes regularly close over the course of three to five seasons of focused training, assuming continued improvement and no significant injury setbacks. Her trajectory from 3.85 metres in the summer of 2024 to 3.95 metres in February 2025 to 3.90 metres outdoors in August 2025 does not yet show a steep climb, but it shows consistent presence at meaningful heights, with further improvement still ahead of her.

Social Media and Public Profile

Manuela Blanco maintains an Instagram account under the handle @manuelablnco, where she identifies herself as a “u20 athlete, Spain” representing the Spanish flag. At the time of writing, she has approximately 5,600 followers — a modest but growing audience reflective of an athlete whose regional and national profile is building steadily. No commercial sponsorships beyond her club’s title sponsor Sanysec are publicly documented. The club’s sponsorship arrangement with Sanysec, a local Ourense company, provides the competitive infrastructure within which she trains and competes.

Looking Ahead

Having turned 19 in December 2025, Manuela Blanco retains Sub-20 eligibility and moves forward with full Sub-23 eligibility for the remainder of that age window. The years immediately ahead are, by any measure, the most important development period of her career. The Spanish Sub-23 championships will be her primary benchmark for the next three seasons, and the gap she observed between herself and the national sub-23 leaders in Sabadell provides clear direction for what level of improvement is needed to challenge for gold at that level.

Simultaneously, her appearances at the senior absolute national championships — both indoors and outdoors — give her valuable exposure to competition at the highest domestic level. That exposure matters: understanding how the best senior vaulters approach competition, their technical mastery, their competitive temperament, is part of the education that cannot be replicated within the junior ranks alone.

Ourense Atletismo, meanwhile, continues to build one of the most vibrant women’s athletics programs in Galicia, and Blanco sits at its centre as the club’s most high-profile field athlete. The combination of a supportive training environment, a nationally certified home track, and a competitive club team that routinely competes at the national club championship level gives her the scaffolding she needs for the next phase of her development.

She has done the hard early work: winning a national Sub-20 title, establishing a personal best that earns a World Athletics ranking, and showing up at the senior absolute level and competing. The story from here is about whether she can continue to add centimetres — and the early evidence strongly suggests she can.

Full name: Manuela Blanco Miguélez
Date of birth: 9 December 2006
Birthplace: Ourense, Galicia, Spain
Nationality: Spanish
Club: Sanysec–Club Ourense Atletismo
Event: Pole vault
Personal best: 3.95m (23 February 2025, Gallur, Madrid, indoors)
World Athletics code: 15064842
Current World Ranking: approximately #470 (women’s pole vault)
Instagram: @manuelablnco