Canadian pole vault record holder and 2015 world champion Shawn Barber has died from medical complications. He was 29 years old that year.
Barber’s agent, Paul Doyle, confirmed to The Associated Press that Barber died Wednesday at his home in Kingwood, Texas. The cause of death is unclear. Barber had been facing health issues.
“Sean was not just an incredible athlete, he was a kind-hearted man who always put others before himself,” Doyle said Thursday. “To lose such a good person at such a young age It’s so miserable to be alone.”
Barber was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, but his father, George, was born in Ontario. The family splits their time between the United States and Canada.
He is the Canadian men’s pole vault record holder at 6.00m, which he set in January 2016 in Reno, Nevada. Barber won the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, China with a time of 5.90m.
He also won the NCAA outdoor championship for the University of Akron in 2015, his second consecutive indoor championship that season. Barber also won one of his five Canadian titles that year.
A year later, Barber reached the finals in the pole vault at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, where Thiago Braz of Brazil won.
His mother, Ann, died. father, George; and brother, David.
