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2024 proved a fruitful year for Australian Athletics but 2025 could even be better as the once global force in athletics looks to recapture past glory.
The future looks bright for the Australian athletics federation if the performance of the athletes at global championships in 2024 is anything to go by.
While the emergence of the Usain Bolt-likened Gout Gout has set tongues wagging, it is his performance in the Australian Schools Championships that set the world ablaze. Last year proved Australian Athletics is on the right trajectory again after so many years in the doldrums.
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10:00 - 17.11.2024
How Jessica Hull's move back to her Australian homeland became catalyst for 2024 success
Hull, 28, returned home in April 2023 to be closer to family and be coached by her dad Simon
The Paris Olympic Games was the best performance from an Australian athletics team since Melbourne in 1956. The team brought home seven medals — one gold, two silver and four bronze — to claim the best Olympics result in 68 years.
It's so hard to put into a few lines what unfolded in Paris but Nina Kennedy's gold medal-winning pole vault of 4.90m was the first gold medal from an Australian woman in a field event. However, she wasn't the only woman who dominated in the field — Nicola Olyslagers and Eleanor Patterson won silver and bronze respectively in the high jump.
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18:44 - 26.12.2024
'We need to wrap our arms around them' - Pundit calls for protection of sprints sensation Gout Gout ahead of LA 2028 Olympics
Junior athletes in Australia led by Gout Gout need to be handled with glove hands for them to develop into world beaters.
Jessica Hull won silver, to many it felt like gold because she came up against a boisterous field that had track queen Faith Kipyegon- a serial winner whose gold medal exploits has made the 30-year-old a global household name. She was only beaten by world record holder Kipyegon who won her third consecutive 1,500 metre Olympic title. It was the first time an Australian woman had medaled in the event at the Olympics.
Esteemed middle and long distance running coach Dick Telford said athletes like Hull had put the disciplines on show. "We've got a lot of middle distance and distance runners, females and males, that are revolutionising athletics. It's really exciting to see … records will get broken as we find new ways to train, people with superior genetic ability, better shoes to wear and so on," Telford told Australian Morning News.
After a breakout 2024 season, Gout Gout is tipped to rule track and field in 2025 and beyond as he bids to follow in the footsteps of his idol Bolt. The World Championships in Tokyo could be a platform the Aussie sensation will likely use to announce his arrival at the grandest stage.
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