Remember 1968, Ralph Doubell in the Mexico City 800 meters, 1964, Ron Clarke going down to the wire in the 10,000 meters with Billy Mills and Mohammed Gammoudi and Ron's string of World Records, Herb Elliott in 1958-1960 in the Mile/1500 meters, John Landy 1954-56 in the mile/1500 meters, Rob De Castella in the marathon in the 1970's, Kerry O'Brien and others I've neglected to mention? For years the Aussies were always a factor on the track and then they faded somewhat as the Kenyans and Ethiopans, Eritrean, even the occasional Somali and South African came to the fore. Then too the occasional Brit, Coe, Cram, Wightman, Kerr, and of course Jakob Ingebrigtsen began taking over the headlines. They (the Aussies) also put a ban on their athletes coming to America on athletic scholarships in the 1960's. They thought there was a 'leg drain'. Big mistake. Those days of glory seemed to have gotten away from the lads down under. For a moment in the Sydney Olympics, Cathy Freeman brought the green and yellow back to the forefront, but that was short lived, and it was 400 meters.
Jessica Hull
Now a new generation is cropping up in the headlines. And some are back in US universities. The past two years Stewart McSweyn has been showing a lot of promise as well as Ollie Hoare, the Oregon transplant. But crickey this week another Oregon transplant Jessica Hull demonstrated in two incredible performances that she is a power on the world stage. Last weekend at Paris she ran a 3:50.83 1500 meters staying in the wake of Faith Kipyegon, as Faith again took down her own World Record to 3:49.04. But Friday July 12 at Monaco Jessica Hull claimed her own World Record in the 2000 meters, bettering Burundian Francine Niyonsaba's record by almost 2 seconds. Admittedly this is a seldom run race, but the way in which Hull on her own ran that race after the pacers dropped out and with a 63 second last lap after running even 64's most of the way, strongly indicates that there is a lot left for her to display in the coming weeks at Paris. And she was carrying the effects of that 1500 a week earlier in her legs.
from Wikipedia: "After high school, Hull went to the United States where she studied at University of Oregon, completing a degree in human physiology.[8] As a student-athlete, she represented Oregon Ducks. She was coached by Maurica Powell for three years and Helen Lehman-Winters in her senior year."
"Hull was the NCAA Division I indoor 3000 m bronze medallist in 2018 and over the next two years added six podium finishes on the indoor and outdoor track and in cross country, including four collegiate titles. She was the individual NCAA champion in the 1500 m in 2018 and in the indoor 3000 m in 2019, earning seven All-American honors."
Splits on that 2000 were as follows: (from letsrun.com)
Lap
Hull Niyonsaba*
1 64.2 64.5
2 64.2 64.7
3 64.1 64.7
4 63.2 66.3
5 63.0 61.3
5:19.70 5:21.56
Other finishers in the race:
| PLACE | ATHLETE | COUNTRY | RESULT | PB/SB/WR |
|---|
| 1 | HULL Jessica | AUS | 5:19.70 | WR |
| 2 | COURTNEY-BRYANT Melissa | GBR | 5:26.08 | NR |
| 3 | JEBITOK Edinah | KEN | 5:26.09 | NR |
| 4 | McGEE Cory Ann | USA | 5:28.78 | AR |
| 5 | GRIFFITH Georgia | AUS | 5:28.82 | |
| 6 | STAFFORD Lucia | CAN | 5:31.18 | NR |
| 7 | GUILLEMOT Agathe | FRA | 5:32.63 | NR |
| 8 | GARCÍA Marta | ESP | 5:32.86 | NR |
| 9 | EMBAYE Axumawit | ETH | 5:34.99 | |
| 10 | MAGEEAN Ciara | IRL | 5:43.06 | |
| 11 | FERNÁNDEZ María Pía | URU | 5:50.21 | AR |
Why bring this up in the first place?
The Sydney Times Herald carried an interesting article on the rebirth of Australian running on June 22 which was prior to the above events. It was in a Sunday supplement called "GoodWeekend" by Konrad Marshall. A good friend John Cobley who had received a clipped copy from his brother in Australia sent it on to me. I am putting the article in its entirety below on our blog. It is some interesting reading about how this Aussie Renaissance has come about. Jessica Hull came on so quickly that she is not even mentioned in the article.
This is available by subscription only and looking at past offerings from GoodWeekend it seems to be a very good journal with excellent sports writing. I'm tempted to take a short subscription.
Please note that the right hand column does not fit our space, so I've typed that column in after each page. Ed.
Olympic qualifying times, win hotly contested domestic
races and place in prestigious International fields, yet
miss out on the Games. Catrionia Bisset, for example is the fastest
Australian woman ever over 800 meters-
the current national record holder- but is not guaranteed a ticket.
"Twenty years ago, you used to get the qualifying time and you were in," says
Nic Bideau,\perhaps Australia's pre-eminent running coach. "It was like, great,
they get a tracksuit, go to the Games, say they're an Olympian-
but most were shit. Now if you get on the team, you're not going to
make up the numbers. Your're going to make the final."
Exactly how this happened
involves everything from luck in critical mass of genetic lottery
winners to geography (the giftedgathering in clusters) , access to
expertise (through a decentral-ised coaching model) and ever-
expanding pathways (such as US university programs),
as well as improved shoe technology, shift in the
economics of running, a growing online community of
athletes and a new era of data-sharing. Not to mention
inspiration from retired outliers like Craig Mottram.
Mottram of course, challenged the established
Kenyan dominance in middle-distance running two
decades beating reigning Kenyan world champion
Benjamin Limo, for instance, to a silver medal at the
2006 Commonwealth Games n Melbourne. Now the
man they used to call "The Big Mzungu" leads Peyton
Craig and other jets as coach of the On Athletics Club
Oceania. Running, he says, is still the broadest participa-
tion sport on earth, but more Australians choosing to
compete is making a big difference. Craig, for example
was also a junior swimming champion and triathlete
before settling on athletics a year ago, whIle Mottram's
star runner, Claudia Hollingsworth, 19 - who was just
selected for the Paris Olympics in the 800m - chose run-
ning over a potential AFLW career.
"But that choice has gotta come from somewhere,"
says Mottram who runs a coaching business that helps
scoop up such precocious athletes. "The ability has prob-
ably always been there, but a lot of the best talent ended
up in other sports because we didn't have thE mechan-
nisms n place to capture and develOp it. We do now."
That's music to the ears of Andrew Faichney, the
high performance boss at Athletics Australia, who
points back at people like Mottram - along with other
coaches like Bideau (Stewart McSwyen and Georgia
Griffith). Ned Brophy-Williams (Catriona Bisset and
Linden Hall), Dick Telford (Cameron Myers and Jye
Edwards) and Justin Rinaldi (Peter Bol) as leading this
charge. "There's this much wider group of coaches now,
who know what it takes to get to the level,"
Falchney says. "And there's this challenge being laid
down, from ne group t another."
Athletics Australia is helping. A small example four
years ago, it had one physiologist employed for half a
day each week. Now it has two full-timers n the role-
Sharma and Brophy-Williams - bringing coaches the
best possible evidence-based technology (like those
VO2 max tests), which helps them to quantitatively
tailor training. Faichney likes to say it's become a
"coach-facing" organisation, adding more workshops,
conferences and formalised mentoring - and money for
coaches to follow their runners overseas, instead of
sending them into global competition alone. "I'm not
saying this stuff never happened in the past, but it's
happening more systematically."
The system for training athletes has also changed.
After a poor showing in the 2012 London Olympics,
athletics nationally became less focused on funnelling
runners into the Australian Institute of Sport in
Canberra, and more on supporting them in a diffuse
Left: physiologist Avish Sharma (left) and coach
Nic Bideau, who says a Games medal "Will
happen". Below 1500 meters runner Georgia
Griffith (Brown shorts) says training facilties
are better in Melbourne than Sydney.
Bottom: (front left) 800 meters stars Peter Bol
and Joseph Deng with coach Justin Rinaldi
Photo references are in the page above. ed.
far," Rinaldi says. "It gets you up and enjoying yourself,
seeing things tourists don't see."
Georgia Griffith a Gen Z runner and digital native
sponsored by Puma -and who last month set a new
national record for the 3000 metres - says shoe compa-
nies are also rolling out showier online campaigns.
"Some of the brands have put a lot of money in it, get-
ting photographers and videographers to capture their
training camps. It's really slick," Griffith says, "If you
treat it as a good thing, you can gain a little inspiration
and get yourself into the right mindset."
Bol embraces it all even hosting his own YouTube
channel - a platform that led him to connect with
British 1500 star Jake Wightman - first just messag-
ing, then doing actual training sessions together. "It's
pretty cool how running is so collaborative and inclu-
sive," Bol says. "You can't go an have a kick with your
AFL team. You can't jump in a car with your favourite
F1 Driver. But you can come to Collingwood on Saturday
and run with me. Athletics is a pretty humble sport."
IF THAT sounds a touch too convivial to produce
medals, those who would know say the hardware is on
the way. Not necessarily in Paris, but perhaps at the
Olympics after that. Nic Bideau casts his eye over a
workout in suburban Glen Waverley, east of Melbourne,
where more than a few dozen runners breeze around
the spongy grass track. He gives me a pro tip for sport-
ting the champions among them. "They're the ones
that look like gazelles."
Sinead Diver is here, the Australian record holder and
national champion in the marathon, as is her male coun-
terpart, Bret Robinson. Griffith is running alongside one
of her biggest competitors, Sarah Billings, and they're
not far from generational talent Stewart McSweyn.
"Let's be real. We still haven't won a middle-distance
medal at the Olympics since ralph Doubell in 1968, but
we're getting closer," says Bideau with characteristic
frankness. "It'll happen." Take the men's and women's
1500m in Tokyo - Australia had two runners in each
final. Astonishingly, almost one-sixth of the field
was Aussie. "Maybe ths year we'll get three in each final -a
quarter of the field?" says Bideau. "That's how you get
medals."
We've definitely improved since Tokyo. Prior to the
last Olympics, the national record in the women's 1500m
was 4 minutes and 0.86 seconds. "Now, that time will
only get you sixth place in Australia," says Sharma.
"You've essentially go to run past what the Australian
record was only a few years ago, jut to get on the team."
It's changing the way the Australian running calen-
dar unfolds, too. Guns who used to be able to skip the
there are 50,000 runners, blanket coverage
and sponsors putting up millions. It's not just
prize money but bonuses and appearance fees.
It dwarfs all other running money."
Michel Boeting, the Dutch agent who has
represented the likes of Kenyan superman
Eliud Kipchoge - the first person to break the
two hour barrier for the marathon - sys this
shift has been supercharged lately. In the 1990's
thee were myriad lucrative track meets, but as
the World Athletics body began pushing for the
best showcase fields possible, second-tier meets
disappeared while marathons took off. "The
winner of the Rome Marathon this year won
15,000 Pounds (about $24,000), which is more than any
Diamond League win, and it's a fourth-tier
marathon at best." Boeting says. "If you look in
China alone, there's maybe 100 marathons."
In Kenya, he adds, there are two kinds of
athletes, the 20 percent with a specific athletic
ambition, and the 80 percent who just want to
make a living. "If the latter can go twice a year
to China for three months and make $20,000,
they'll do that," Boeting says. "Are they going to
be millionaires? N. But are they going to have
a good life back home? Yes.
Boeting has one other theory about why Kenyans
aren't dominating the track as they once did, and it's
related to the new "super shoes" flooding the world of
athletics These shoes utilise a stiff
carbon-fibre plate and an exaggerated foam cushion to
give runners better return on energy expended. They've
seen running times plummet for athletes allover the
world - Boeting isn't sure everyone benefits equally.
"There's new research being done on 'responders' and
'non-responders' - to do with you build and size,"
Boeting says. "I and some of my colleagues think Kenyans
with the way they're built, and running so efficiently al-
ready, don't get as much advantage."
Whatever the reason as white runners take flight,
shoe company cash is shifting away from Africa. Nike
and Adidas once sponsored the vast majority of world-
class runners. Now manufacturers like Puma, On,
Asics and New Balance are also investing in talent, and
they're flocking to Europe, America, and Australia.
"There wold be 50 Aussie runners or more sponsored
by a shoe company right now, says Bideau. "It used to
be that the three best runners in Australia had a shoe
deal, but everyone's got a bloody contract these days.
THE MIDDLE - distance ascendancy is happeing in
tandem with gains in short and longer distances--
promising results in the 200 and 400, 5000, and 10,000
metres. Throw in the rise of amateur run clubs, and
flourishing mass-participation events - like the record
840,818 applications received for the 2025 London
Marathon - and you have a global grassroots platform.
People are paying more attention too as evidenced by
the national championships in Adelaide, attended by
about 30,000 people, more than double the year before.
Dick Telford saw it first hand at a recent Sydney
track meet, where his nascent star Cam Myers beat
British champion Jake Wightman not long after post-
ing the fastest ever 1500m time by an under 16 (break-
ing the international record once held by Ingebrigtsen).
"If you're at track meet and you have a little bit of
talent you get spurred on by that stuff." says Telford.
"To see the way the kids flocked u to Cam for auto-
graphs and selfies, it's gotta rub off, doesn't it?"
For Moneghetti, the equation is simple. There's no
great difference in talent around the world, nor in
training, but there is a difference in the psychology of
belief. He can see that belief now, every time our run-
ners hit the starting line. "There's been ths perception
for too long that Australians can't be any good at ath-
letics," Moneghetti says. "But they're doing something
superhuman now. They're saying, 'Yes we can' and
they're showing it with their legs."
"I’m glad they’re back. The Aussies always had a fight to the finish attitude, as did New Zealanders."
Bill Schnier
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