The team is selected, the uniforms have been delivered (after a slight shipping container delay) and the commentators are practicing their surname pronunciation as the Olympics are almost here. This fortnight, there is a deep dive into what the Australian team needs to do to rank as one of our greatest ever Athletics squads. Results from Gold Coast, Paris and Monaco are also covered plus all the normal segments I love to include and I know my Mum and Kirsty Rayner enjoy reading. Take your time reading this Issue, you may need to split it into a 60/30 double or open it in your browser to read in full. Enjoy.
FTK
#104. Brett returned from behind the paywall to share limited news about his whereabouts. All I know is he’s based at this location in Font Romeu and has been maintaining his usual rate of reply on WhatsApp. Importantly he is not going to be building up the excuses each week on the podcast so you’ll have to imagine his training weeks. Joel on the other hand went through one of his best training weeks of recent note where he ran 115km and recorded some strong calf measurements.
#105. Joel continued his good form into another 100+km week where he ran once through the Cheviot Tunnel in Yea but not twice because he was a little scared. We were also able to pull the CCTV footage from Joel’s yoga class and this is how it started… Brett also dropped some loose hints about how his training has been going from solitary confinement. It’s slightly more info than we have from Pat or Liam so one must therefore assume he’s training more than them right?
Spiked Up
#18. After last episode’s action packed adventure from Sarah, Rose took the reins this time on her ‘business’ trip to Portugal for a pacing job where she ran a 15 minute 5000m. In reference to how the team Audi controls the speed, it’s a combo of GPS and a camera as well for the non-car nerds out there. This episode also featured a set of 10 anonymous confessions from the Hoyos crew.
#19. Sarah set the record straight on how she competed, and won an 800m race, in Sweden but flew into Norway. Rose turned a grumpy week into her biggest week of mileage and showed how one good hill rep is all you need to get out of the oven. The 10 confession session answers were revealed and this episode marks only one more to go until the girls take a Season Break, presumably so Rose can focus on a big 5000m race.
Some quick fire race results for team Spiked Up. Sarah ran 2:00.22 (4th) and 2:00.30 (1st) across 800m in Italy and Finland respectively. Rose ran 4:06.33 (6th) over 1500m in Lignano.
En Route to Paris
#6. Jess recapped her week leading into the Gold Coast Half where she ran a PB of 70:08 for 2nd place and included an interesting anecdote about the starting procedure. Gen on the other hand came out of the trenches for a few days and then went back in them with some sickness. Archer continued his trend of being a gremlin at some stage throughout the training week. Sinead was unavailable at time of recording presumably because she was too busy replying to all the fan mail after this Rebel Sport commercial.
#7. Sinead’s wifi bandwidth wasn’t coping with all the fan mail but Jess and Gen’s 150km weeks each were more than enough content for 1hr (and 12 minutes!). Highlights include; the Stenson’s learnt the hard way about train fares in Europe, Gen started experiencing some self-conscious Strava scaries, Jess dodged a lightning storm but not a worm storm and Gen saw a Sky Doctor. There is only 4 weeks to go now for these ladies, perfect time for a final month subscription.
Sometimes writing about results that happened a fortnight ago feels a bit old and outdated. Everyone probably knows what happened, why bother writing about it? Well for the same reason I listen to the same music and watch the same movies on rotation, it’s important to replay the classic results from the past to ensure the times and results are quoted into perpetuity. Much like your favourite song lyrics.
PARIS Diamond League: The opening track of this fortnight’s Results Album is Jess Hull’s Paris Diamond League banger. It goes for 3:50.83 and is the fifth fastest 1500m of all-time. The results it sits behind are Faith Kipyegon’s new WR in the same race, Genzebe Dibaba’s 3:50.07 from Monaco in 2015, Gudaf Tsegay’s 3:50.30 from the same Xiamen race that Georgia Griffiths and Sarah Billings went sub-4 in and a 3:50.46 from suspected Chinese doper Yunxia Qu in 1993. That means there is only two other people who have gone faster than Jess this year. The 7 second PB improvement from Jess is also something you see from a 14 year old who suddenly hits puberty in their second season of athletics, not a professional athlete. There’s an argument to be made that such an impressive jump has to be suspicious (how dare you question Jess Hull?!) but the results of the races Jess has run this year shows it was just another race where she went with the leaders and was in the race. The race just happened to be won in a new WR. The hard evidence on that fact is that Jess has had 13 races this year where she has finished on the podium (1-3) and only one other race where, you guessed it, she was one step off of it in 4th at World Indoors.
The sister track to Jess Hull’s Paris banger is Linden Hall’s own 3:56.40 in the same race. A PB for the former NR holder it continues the trend she’s set so far in 2024 of slowly winding up the tempo similar to Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird (imagine having that blaring out over the speakers at the track?). Will she wind it up another seven seconds? Well who knows, anything’s possible from now on right? Are we even trying hard enough if we’re not setting 7 second PB’s? These two, plus their third compatriot in the 1500m, Georgia Griffiths, will be a formidable trio in under a month’s time back at Paris.
News of his double selection in the 1500m and 5000m at the Olympics sat well with Stewy McSweyn who was also at the same Paris DL. 7:29.46 for 3000m isn’t a PB or a 3:50 Women’s 1500m but it’s certainly not an instrumental filler track on the Album. It registered as his 5th highest World Athletics point scoring race ever and best this year, knocking his own 12:56 over 5000m out of his top 10 results. The 3000m isn’t an Olympic event but if it were Stewy would be one of the favourites. His result was the 5th fastest this year over the distance that seems to allow him to make up time for his slow starts while not letting too many East African aerobic monsters in with a look.
MONACO Diamond League: Flip the Results Album over to the other A-side (yes, there’s no B-side to be seen on this LP) and we had Olli Hoare putting down a 1500m SB (by 0.01 seconds) of 3:31.07 for 7th in a venerable field of who’s who. One of the who’s, the one that won, was Jakob ‘Daddy’ Ingebrigtsen who ran 3:26.73 for a PB and 6th fastest time ever. Remember the doubts earlier in the year when Jakob was hitting his first race of the season at the Bowerman Mile with a newborn baby in his life? Those doubts are gone now.
Lauren Ryan ran her 7th 5000m race of the year for a disappointing 15:22 and 13th place. Not her slowest time of the year (that came in the National Championships in April) but not exactly a confidence booster before Olympics. Lauren, if you’re reading this, don’t worry girl, you’ve got the bad race out of the way now, the Olympics will still be fire *inserts a thousand fire emoji’s*.
Closing out the final tracks of the A-side Results Album for this fortnight it’s Jess Hull again who returned to the mic track to set a new 2000m WR of 5:19.70. Some quickfire super-lay-tives, Jess won the race by 7 seconds, beat former WR holder Genzebe Dibaba’s time by 4 seconds, won her first DL race and set her 3rd best ever WA points score (behind her 1500m result a week earlier and her 3000m at this year’s World Indoors). On back-up vocals in the same race, Georgia Griffith ran 5:28.82 to also beat former Australian Record holder Benita Willis’s 5:37.71 from 2003. It continued Georgia’s great run of form this year where as it stands, her worst performance is a 4:06 for 1500m which is equal to her best performance from her 2023 European season. The bath Queen has certainly got things clicking at the moment.
If you’re wondering how to get your own fitness clicking here’s the inside cover of the Results Album this fortnight where instead of song lyrics and credits to the publishers (Grattan House) we find pertinent quotes if you plan on running a WR or winning an Olympic Gold medal.
I definitely felt Paris’s race all week in the legs. So today the goal was just to be strong, even if my legs were very heavy. I ran at a different pace and level of fatigue I have never been at before. It was incredible, when I was on my own in the last lap, everyone was cheering for me. The wavelights also helped, I was just looking at the lights hoping that they don’t catch me. It is amazing to be called a world record holder now. The last 200m were a long way, I didn’t want to let down the spectators. I ran hard for this record, I worked extremely hard for this too. There are for sure some women who can run that 5:19, but for now I have my place in the history books. I am running so fast now, because I have been healthy for four years and have a really strong body now. - Jess Hull after running a 2000m WR.
I feel amazing. It is truly amazing how we as athletes develop ourselves and we run even faster at almost every competition we participate at. I really enjoy competing in Monaco, especially when a lot of Norwegian fans are here. That helps me a lot. I will continue doing what I have always been doing. I will continue developing physically and continue believing in my training. I see that I am increasing my potential every year. It is really important for athletes to believe in what they are doing. When you achieve great results, it is easier to be confident for the future competitions. I am excited about Paris. I feel strong, I will do my best and hopefully bring home the gold medal. - Jakob Ingebrigtsen
Nice words Jess and Jakob although in Jakob’s case, let’s hope it’s a silver or bronze medal. Is Gold too much to ask for from Olli/Stewy/Adam Spencer??? Maybe, but we will get a form check on all three of these at the upcoming London Diamond League on 20th July (midnight on Saturday for the headline events). An early look at the next Album dropping from London has some very exciting tracks:
Women’s 800m. Catriona Bisset ft. Keely Hodgkinson, who is still undefeated over 800m this season, and Laura Muir.
Men’s 3000m. Jude Thomas ft. friend of FTK Brian Fay and 7:25 men Grant Fisher and Telahun Bekele
Men’s Mile. Add Cam Myers' name to the 1500m trio Australia has selected plus Callum Davies, Andrew Coscoran, Niels Laros (3:48 PB), George Mills (3:47) and Norway’s second favourite middle distance son, Narve Nordås (3:48).
Switching tempo from the track to the road, the results from the Gold Coast Marathon made a mockery of some of my commentary in Issue 35 which is fantastic. I alluded to it being tough for an Aussie to win the half marathon given the PB’s and form on paper of the internationals but I was gladly proven wrong by Leanne Pompeani and Andy Buchanan. Leanne’s win in 69:20 makes it the second year in a row she’s been the highest placed Australian in the half so after a rocky past 12 months it’s exciting to see if she can translate this result into a more productive second half of 2024.
Andy’s 62:25 for the win made sure he didn’t let his PB from late 2019 turn five years old. It was an exciting result, probably only bettered by Timothy Kattam’s late kick in the Marathon, with Andy, Isaac Heyne and two Japanese runners still together in a pack of four late into the race. Andy dropped them all though and after twenty years of visiting the Gold Coast, finally found his way home the fastest. Isaac’s debut at 62:27 wiped almost twenty seconds off non-starter Riley Cocks SA State Record and must surely have him thinking about his love and focus on the track as mentioned on FTK Episode 101.
The Marathoner’s had arguably better weather conditions than those on Saturday and Yuki Nakamura, a 2:32 girl on Saturday, became a 2:24 and CR girly-pop on Sunday. Sarah Klein was the top Aussie in 2:31:58 for 5th, almost two minutes back from her PB but over 3 minutes ahead of next best Aussie Abigail Nordberg. Milly Clark was another spot back in 7th overall in 2:36:45 while Tara Palm DNF’ed which was disappointing after she DNS’ed at Launceston earlier in the year. A redemption opportunity awaits Tara at the Sunshine Coast Half.
On the Men’s side, Timothy Kattam 2:08:52 won by 6 seconds in front of Belay Tilahun. If you haven’t watched the last five minutes of the stream I suggest doing so as you’ll see Kattam ‘chatting’ to Tilahun as the eventual second place was stuck like glue to Kattam’s back not willing to do any work on the front. My lip-reading ability isn’t great but the conversation was either ‘hey, get off my back and race next to me you little b****-kicker’ or ‘Hi, lovely day for a run’. Regarding the Australian’s, Liam Boudin went out at somewhere near 2:10 pace in a manner similar to that other Liam guy who runs marathons for Australia before falling back to 2:13:56 as first Australian in an impressive debut. Behind him, Thomas Do Canto was running a much more even race and ran 2:14:37 for his second fastest marathon time and 3rd 2:14 in his career. Reece Edwards registered 2:15:13 which on the face of his ultimate life-goal to run sub 2:10 seems like a failure but really, it is right in the middle of all his other marathon results and is a lot better than his other 2024 results. The other man featured in the preview last Issue, Adrian Potter, did better than his Adelaide Harriers teammate and managed to finish his debut but was a shell of the runner normally seen on the roads.
In other running related news from the Gold Coast Marathon it will be interesting to see the growth in another 12 months for ‘off the field road’ developments. Will there be increased capacity? Will it sell out even quicker next year? How many content creators will there be capturing everything from the actual running to free Pizza? Perhaps there’ll be free Pasta and free Beer from other brands next year? One can only dream…
The announcement of the Australian Athletics team a fortnight ago didn’t involve too many surprises in the end. Cam Myers, Bendere Oboya and maybe Jenny Blundell could all make cases, along with the marathon girls, to be the next closest to selection. Luke Boyes (800m), Jack Rayner (10,000m) and Matt Ramsden (5000m) are the only National Champions not to be selected after failing to register either the time or a high enough quota position. The athletes in the team will be breathing a sigh of relief only momentarily though as it’s time to shift their focus from making the team to performing on the team. What do this team, featuring some of our greatest ever athletes, have to do to become our most successful athletics team ever?
Well, from a distance running perspective, quite a lot better than they did in the most recent World Championships. In Budapest last year, only one male, Stewy McSweyn, made the final (5000m) of an event with Pete Bol, Joseph Deng, Morgan McDonald, Matt Clarke and Adam Spencer all on the team then and in Paris. It was a similar story on the Women’s side with Jess Hull finishing 7th in the 1500m final the only female to progress out of the heats and semi’s. Catriona Bisset, Abbey Caldwell, Linden Hall, Rose Davies and Lauren Ryan will all be using their experience from those championships and prior ones as well, to improve on their results.
That’s the recent World Championship form. What about the ‘recent’ 3 year old Olympic form?
In Tokyo, Pete Bol finished 4th in the 800m, Olli Hoare and Stewy made the 1500m final and Pat Tiernan was swinging with the big hitters in the 10,000m for most of the race. Linden Hall and Jess Hull made the Women’s 1500m final in a campaign where we finished as the 10th ranked team overall. Our best ever ranking was 3rd in Melbourne in 1956, presumably where we had an advantage with a larger team than most nations who struggled to get to our shores.
Having rattled off the finalists we’ve had in these past two campaigns is that what success can be judged on? It’s not the greatest metric but a Top 8 or Top 10 finish in an Olympic or World Championship race does help for future selection under Athletics Australia’s selection policy. PB’s or even just finishing positions within heats and semifinals are another metric for those not progressing to the final. Take for example Matt Clarke’s results in the Steeple. 39th overall at Tokyo, 35th at Budapest, maybe Top 30 in Paris is successful for Clarkey? Tracking down the stats on data like that for every multiple Olympic and World Champ representative would take more time than the Olympics goes for so instead, it’s the potential finalists metric that will convince me of whether or not this team will be labelled as the greatest athletics team ever at the conclusion of the Olympics.
The magic number the 2024 team has to beat is 9 finalists (including the 10,000m as a straight final) from the 2016 Rio team. Quick side note. The athletes still remaining from that 2016 team and their respective events back then are; Liam Adams (Marathon), Jess Stenson (Marathon), Brett Robinson (5000m), Gen Gregson (3000m SC and 5000m), Linden Hall (1500m) and Peter Bol (800m). It will be all of these athletes' third Olympics in Paris except for Gen who is on her fourth team.
Who is leading the fictional sports betting market then as leading finals contenders? Easy ones first. Well, actually, there’s a lot of easy ones in my patriotically biassed opinion. In distance order, Jess Hull, Linden Hall and Georgia Griffith in the Women’s 1500m. Olli Hoare in the Men’s 1500m. Stewy in the Men’s 5000m. Rose in the Women’s 5000m. Lauren Ryan is an automatic finalist in the 10,000m. That’s 7 already. Throw in one of the 800m weapons of the six across the Men’s and Women’s teams that have been selected brings us to 8. Then we just need someone on the edge like Morgan McDonald or Izzi Batt-Doyle who are both sitting at 21st in the Road to Paris quota for the 5000m to get lucky. Adam Spencer is also at 21st position in the Men’s 1500m with Stewy even higher placed. That’s four maybe’s to get us over the line and I haven’t even introduced the steeplers yet, who, by the very nature of their event may sneak through to the final in the case all the favourites in a heat fall into the water jump. That might not be enough of an argument to put my mortgage payments on the line but it is close enough to suggest the ‘greatest ever athletics team’ moniker is on the cards.
That’s all without even incorporating any marathon discussion at all. AND THIS NEWSLETTER IS CALLED THE BLUE LINE. So how do the marathoners get involved then? Well adjudging their performances from an individual perspective will make life difficult as much as I can be patriotically optimistic. Lisa Ondieki’s Silver medal from 1988 isn’t going to be replicated I don’t think. At the same Olympics Mona and Deeks came 5th and 8th respectively. A lot of heavy lifting is required by the current crop to beat that marathon team performance. In recent history, Milly Clark finished 18th in Rio, Michael Shelley was 16th in London, Lisa Weightman was 17th in London and Sinead was 10th in Tokyo. That’s it for Top 20 finishes since 2004. That’s only 4 people, with 2, Shelley and Weightman in London, coming in the same Olympics and a great success as Borat would say. You can have all the optimism in the world pre-event that any one of the 6 Aussies has a chance of Top 20 but realistically if any one of them cracks it we should be immensely proud. If two make it, doubly proud. If three of them do so, Joel will shout everyone beers at the FTK Christmas party.
Of course, if I were putting my politically correct former school teacher hat on I’d preface this all by saying something cheesy like results don’t matter, it’s the taking part that counts. Which is what Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the Modern Olympic Games, actually said. But when you live in the actual modern world, results do count. A successful athletics team will drive eyeballs towards our sport, encourage young Australians to become runners and increase the amount of government funding Athletics Australia receives. All very, very good things. If you don’t take my word for it, I’m sure you were surprised by how much reach Jess Hull’s WR had in your non-running circle of friends so imagine what a moniker like ‘greatest ever athletics team’ could do for running. As if any of our Olympians or their coaches or their physio’s needed extra incentive to do their best in a few weeks time, hopefully they now get the picture that not only should they be focused on doing well for themselves, but they should also be focused on doing well for their country.
There were some other international results off the DL broadway in Europe across last fortnight. Peter Bol ran his second fastest 800m of the year to finish 5th in 1:45.76 in Belgium. Linden Hall ran an 800m SB. Claudia Hollingsworth also ran at the same Lignano 1500m as Rose and Izzi (4:08 PB) to finish 2nd with 4:03.95, less than a second off her PB. Abbey Caldwell won a Category B meet in 1:59.35 in Switzerland.
Elise Beacom has created a new podcast titled Run With It that is, you guessed it, about running. It’s not the usual training weeks format however, instead Elise hopes to talk with a whole range of people involved in the running economy. Given Elise’s unique background as a former journalist, sub-elite runner (she might baulk at the sub-elite part) Grattan House contributor and up-and-coming influencer it is sure to provide some insightful learnings. The first episode featured Zachary Gates who has earned the title of best running-newsbreaker in the mainstream media while episode two featured Izzi Batt-Doyle.
Still on running news themed snippets, it was revealed that Gerard Whateley will be commentating the athletics. Gerard is one of the most well-known voices on SEN and in the AFL so if he picks up a thing or two from our athletes through his commentary and shares it down the track with other AFL media stars, such as his AFL360 co-host Mark Robinson, just maybe, we’ll see some distance runners crack into the spotlight a bit more. Bruce McAvaney also allayed concerns he wouldn’t be at the Games when it was revealed he’ll be on ABC’s coverage. All we need now is Michael Buffer to give us a ‘let’s get ready to rumble’ and we’re in broadcasting heaven.
If you are critical of Athletics Australia’s handling of the selection process, spare a thought for our ancestral UK cousins. This article best sums up the mood of some British athletes who have been left off the team despite hitting the World Athletics standards. It’s the same scenario our swimmers face with Swimming Australia imposing tougher criteria than the world governing body. The argument for federations to do this is so that the resources can be more focused on those athletes with a medal chance. In a very archaic thought experiment imagine having only a limited amount of pasta to give to a marathon team for their carb load the night before the race. Would you rather give everyone just enough so they don’t starve or only have one or two athletes being served the proper carb load amount so they race well while the others aren’t selected? No prizes for any answer as it’s just a thought experiment.
New shoe technology from On created not only running news headlines but actual news headlines with the release of a promotional video showcasing the new LightSpray technology. In summary; a robot spins a mould while another robot shoots one strand of squiggly plastic to create a very light upper in six minutes. Advantages are less product waste, less manufacturing time and improved sustainability credentials (although I reckon every company would be silly not to make new products with better sustainability credentials). Disadvantages may be durability and fit and looking like an idiot in front of your friends in the changerooms. Or that’s how Hellen Obiri felt anyway when she wore a prototype at Boston this year. Then she won and wouldn’t give them back.
The depth in Australia’s women’s marathoning has been lauded over recently and for good reason. However, we still have work to do to catch up to our Land of the Rising Sun Sister’s (Japan). Yuki Nakamura’s GC course record winning time of 2:24:22 would’ve been a huge result if Yuki was an Aussie. It would’ve landed her at 8th all-time. On Japan’s list though it doesn’t put her in the Top 20 or Top 30… Yuki only scrapes in as being the 40th fastest Japanese woman over the Marathon distance. It’s also only the 7th fastest time this year by a Japanese woman. Now that’s depth.
July 20th: London DL. Ft. Women’s 800m, Men’s 3000m and Men’s Mile. Full program.
July 20th: State XC Championships for South Australia and Victoria.
August 1st: The Athletics program starts at the Olympics. Once again, thanks to Andrew Pryn for this image courtesy of everyone’s favourite Facebook group ‘Athletes Australia’.
August 11th: National Half Marathon Championships @ Sunshine Coast. The Victorian team was named this week and it is very high quality. It’ll be the first time we get to see Lisa Weightman’s race since her non-selection.
The Sydney Marathon is also now only 2 months away. Click here to join the FTK Team provided you’ve already got an entry. There is also the FTK Sydney Marathon Long Run at 7am this Sunday the 21st July leaving from Eaglemont Tennis Club.
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