Background
Her father is Swedish and her mother is Afro-Brazilian.
Her father is Swedish and her mother is Afro-Brazilian.
She has been a highly successful youth and junior athlete, winning gold medals at the 2009 World Youth Championships and the 2010 World Junior Championships in Athletics. She set a mark of 4.47 m for the youth world record for the event in 2010 and broke the world junior record with a vault of 4.63 m in 2011. She is also the Swedish national record holder.
Born on 8 July 1993 in Väckelsång, Sweden, Angelica Bengtsson initially started out in gymnastics and also hoped to follow in her father"s footsteps in the javelin throw.
lieutenant quickly became apparent that she had a talent for pole vaulting. However, and she began her career at club level for IFK Växjö, before going on to join Hässelby Saskatchewan. This was a significant winning margin of 22 cm over the rest of the field
In spite of her youth, she took the national senior title at the Swedish Indoor Athletics Championships, beating her Swedish rivals with a clearance of 4.30 m. She attempted to break the Swedish senior record (raising the bar to 452 m) but failed in her three vaults.
Her winning mark was enough to qualify her for the senior 2010 European Athletics Championships, but she opted to focus on the younger age category competitions instead.
Building upon her youth gold from the previous year, she added another gold medal to her collection at the 2010 Junior World Championship in Moncton. Although windy conditions reduced the level of performance, a first time clearance at 4.15 m sealed her victory over the older girls and she added an extra ten centimetres between herself and Holly Bleasdale for a winning mark of 4.25 m. She duly delivered on her favourite status by winning the competition at a height of 4.30 m.
Dismissing the challenge of the Silke Spiegelburg"s world junior record of 4.48 m, Bengtsson went straight for the Swedish senior record, but again 4.52 m proved too much for the young athlete.