Robison Pratt

Biography

Pratt was born in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia to Elbert Pratt and Anne Hinton Pratt. He was named after the Brigham Young University coach, Clarence Robison, for whom his father competed in 1974 as a decathlete. Pratt moved to Dublan, near Chihuahua, Mexico when he was two years old, and gained Mexican citizenship. At age thirteen, he moved to El Paso, Texas, where he began participating in track and field. His father, Elbert, is a professional coach and saw to it that he and his four younger siblings all learned to pole vault. Pratt started serious training at age sixteen, and he won his first pole vaulting medal at age seventeen when he placed first at the Pan American Junior Championships in Havana, Cuba.

In 2003, Pratt began school at Brigham Young University. That year, he was the Mountain West Conference Champion and a finalist in the Pan American Games in the Dominican Republic. In 2004, he married Lisa Antonelli, a fellow BYU track athlete and All-American. In 2005, he became the NCAA National Champion and a finalist in the World University Games in İzmir, Turkey. In 2006, Pratt jumped a personal best of 18 feet 8.25 inches (5.70 m) and finished the indoor season with a world ranking of sixteenth, according to the International Association of Athletics Federations. He was the runner-up in both the indoor and outdoor NCAA National Championships, and he claimed his first senior title in a major international championship by winning the Central American and Caribbean Games, breaking the Games record in the process. Additionally, he was named to the 2006 IAAF World Cup Team to represent the Americas, where he finished in ninth place. In 2007, Pratt became a semi-finalist at the World Championships in Osaka, Japan and a finalist in the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.