Australia’s ‘golden age’ in track and field: How they became such a force

“I’m excited for Australian athletics, but I also feel like the best is yet to come,” said Nicola Olyslagers.

It was August 2025 when the athlete from New South Wales said those words. She had just won the high jump at the Diamond League finals in Zurich, Switzerland, clearing an Oceania record of 2.04m to earn her first title on the premier athletics circuit.

Olyslagers’ excitement stemmed from recent success. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Australia had their best track and field medal haul (seven) since winning 12 on home soil in Melbourne in 1956. She took silver in the French capital, with Eleanor Patterson earning bronze, the first time two Australians medaled in the same field event at a Games.

A year later, Lachlan Kennedy declared this the “golden age” for Australia in track and field.

“We got a medal in every event ‌we ⁠competed in,” the 22-year-old told Australian media, per Reuters, after winning silver in the men’s 100m at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in a national record 9.85 seconds, the joint-fifth fastest time this year. “Aussie track is clearly in the best spot it’s ever been and ​our team ​is so ⁠strong.

“We’re in a real golden age with a lot of ​youngsters and a lot of good ​veteran ⁠talent as well.”

Recent years have seen repeat records for Australia at World Championships and Olympics, and best-ever returns for podium spots.

Success breeds success, and Australia topped the track and field medal table for the third successive Commonwealth Games, a quadrennial multi-sport event contested mainly by nations that were part of the British Empire. Seven of the team’s 12 golds came in one record-breaking day, with the country sweeping the podium in the women’s mile and the 10,000m race walk.

The highlights in Scotstoun Stadium: the women’s mile, the final event. Abbey Caldwell won gold, Jess Hull took silver and Claudia Hollingsworth kicked hard for bronze. Rose Davies became the first woman in Games history to win 5,000m and 10,000m titles at the same edition. Ky Robinson earned silver and gold over those distances in the men’s races.

There was also an Australian 1-2 finish in the women’s high jump (Patterson and Olyslagers). Kennedy and Torrie Lewis won 100m medals with Oceania-record runs, as Lewis became the first Australian woman to run under 11 seconds. Kurtis Marschall claimed his third consecutive Commonwealth pole vault title. Matthew Denny defended his discus crown, and Mackenzie Little won the women’s javelin.

And this is without mentioning rising star Gout Gout, the quickest teenager in history over 200m (19.67s) and already 17th on the all-time list. He’s expected, one day, to contend for global medals, though the 18-year-old’s season was curtailed by a hamstring tear.

But how has Australia turned itself into an elite track and field nation? To answer that, there first needs to be an understanding of the country’s sporting fabric.

Australian rules football and rugby league are major sports, as are cricket and soccer. It is an outstanding swimming nation — second to the United States for medals at seven of the past eight Olympics — and, as a general rule, children are raised on a multi-sport diet.

“It’s the most important thing,” said Aidan Murphy, a versatile sprinter who is the second-quickest Australian man over 200m behind Gout (19.88s). “I found what I was good at because I tried so many things.

“I did soccer, water polo, surf lifesaving, BMX — that was my favorite sport. I transitioned to athletics at 14 or 15, it was the last sport I chose.”

Reflecting on his career path, Murphy said it made him enjoy track and field more. “Since I didn’t have to grow up in it, I never really found any competition anxiety,” he explained.

Plenty of others committed to track and field late. Kennedy, a world indoor 60m silver medalist last year, played junior international rugby union before switching to athletics aged 17. Denny, who won discus bronze at the 2024 Olympics, played both rugby codes in his mid-teens.

Stewart McSweyn, who held the Australian records for the mile and 10,000m, grew up playing cricket, Aussie rules and tennis. Gout was a soccer player in his youth, as was Olympic and World middle-distance medalist Hull.

In an alternative universe, Hollingsworth and Peter Bol would be professionals in Aussie rules and basketball respectively. Instead, they are 800m runners. Ollie Hoare, Commonwealth 1500m champion in 2022, swam at state level.

You get the point.

In Australia, they have Little Athletics, which runs primarily as weekend sessions for youngsters throughout the Australian summer (September to April). First started in the 1960s, it’s a nationwide, grassroots initiative, with a focus on fundamental skills — running, jumping, and throwing. There are competition meets and cross-country in the winter, too.

“For a lot of kids, that’s their first look at athletics,” Andrew Faichney, the general manager of high performance at Athletics Australia, told The Athletic last summer. “It’s always been a key component of the school sporting system.” The aim, he added, is that youngsters “don’t have to go too far” to try track and field, thanks to multiple locations in major cities. It means talent can be paired with the right coaching.

Little Athletics is how Olyslagers and Patterson discovered high jump, and was the route into pole vault for Nina Kennedy and Marschall — that jumping quartet boasts 28 senior international medals, and all have won gold at an Olympics, World Championships and/or Commonwealth Games.

“It all comes back to coaches,” Faichney said. “If we’ve got really good coaches, that’s where we’re going to get success. It’s because of their technical and tactical components, but also they attract the good athletes into those event groups.”

Craig Pickering is the director of performance sustainability at Athletics Australia, responsible for pathways and performance support (sports science, sports medicine, data science), and research and innovation.

In the 2000s, Pickering was an international sprinter for Great Britain. “When I was competing, Australia had generally small teams with a couple of athletes doing really well. The volume of athletes (now) has exploded,” he said over a video call last July. “We’re getting more medals than ever at World Championships and Olympics, but also at the youth level.”

Pickering pointed to the record 14 medals (two golds, seven silvers, five bronzes), including six in one evening session at Hayward Field, won at the under-20s world championships two summers ago.

There is no rush to fast-track those youngsters to the big stage — that includes Gout, Hollingsworth, Lewis and Cameron Myers, the fastest teenager over a mile. But for injury, Gout would have gone to the world under-20s this year, hoping to improve on his 200m silver from 2024.

“We don’t want to accelerate them into our senior program (too) quickly,” Faichney said. “Our view is of a longer-term perspective. We want them to gradually get to that point.”

Murphy is a perfect example. In 2022, five years after his decision to pursue track, the then-18-year-old qualified to race the 200m at the senior world championships in Eugene, Oregon. He still went to Colombia two weeks later for the under-20 equivalent. This year, at 22, he anchored the 4x400m Australia men’s team to an Oceanic-record time — and the sixth-quickest by any team — for bronze at the World Relays.

“We probably wouldn’t have anticipated such success in the sprints 10 years ago,” Faichney said candidly.

It’s why they are investing time and money into relays, knowing the global medal potential that this crop has. On Saturday, Australia won Commonwealth gold in the men’s 4x100m for the first time since 1974, beating Olympic champions Canada in the process.

“It isn’t one (specific) thing,” Pickering stressed, regarding factors behind the collective development. It’s an obvious point but one worth considering in the complicated world of athlete development.

“We started to engage coaches a lot more proactively, that has made a big difference,” Pickering added. “We tend to put them in charge of decision-making. It used to be perceived that we would make decisions for them, and they’d have to do it. There’s less conflict.”

Athletes have support staff who work with them all season, and they only see their national team coaches at camps or major championships.

“We certainly don’t want to be jumping down their throats or getting too close,” Faichney said. “They are young and getting better, and it’s awesome.”

As successful as Australia’s domestic system continues to be — they have institutes of sport in every state — they are smart enough to know that their talent can flourish abroad, too. In March 2011, they opened a European training center in Varese, northern Italy, to offer all their Olympians a “home from home,” which is especially beneficial for track and field athletes who spend May to September competing on the circuit in the northern hemisphere.

Recent years have also seen a rise in the number of Australians attending American colleges. The standouts include Hoare and Hull, both NCAA D1 champions over 1500m — Hoare for the University of Wisconsin, while Hull was an Oregon Duck. Adam Spencer, who is following in Hoare’s footsteps, won world indoor 1500m bronze this March.

In fact, the entire mixed relay team that won gold at the World Cross Country Championships in January went to U.S. colleges: Hoare, Hull, plus Linden Hall (Florida State) and Jack Anstey (Illinois State).

Australia take the Commonwealth Games more seriously than most. They have a history of success at the event, and, located halfway through the Olympic cycle, it offers a stepping stone.

The country led the overall medal table by a considerable margin, winning 68 gold medals and 163 overall, significantly higher than the 27 golds and 106 overall medals second-placed England won.

The big dream is what Australia might — and, based on current success, should — achieve in six years when the Olympics go to Brisbane, 32 years on from the Sydney Games.

“As the UK got awarded the 2012 Olympics, more money came into the sport. We’re seeing the same thing now,” Pickering said. “There’s a direct correlation in elite sport: The more money you have, the better you can do.”

Faichney has worked at Australian athletics in various capacities since 2011, and said the post-Paris Olympics funding increase they received, their first for more than a decade, was “really beneficial.”

For instance, a grant was given to James Fitzpatrick, the head pole vault coach at the Western Australia Institute of Sport, for his project entitled “winning after winning.” He trains Kennedy, the Olympic pole vault champion who, this July, jumped 4.95m, an Oceanic record and joint-fifth all-time. He wants to coach her to defend her title, something only Yelena Isinbayeva has managed (winning in 2004 and 2008).

That is where Australia are now. They have earned their place at the top table because their athletes consistently make global podiums.

If Olysagers is right, then the future is even brighter.

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