One moment it’s Cameron Myers running a 3:47.48 mile at New York’s indoor meeting of legend, the Millrose Games, his time equaling the outright and outdoor national record held by Olli Hoare.
Next, it’s Jack Rayner breaking 13 minutes for 5000 metres, the first sub-13 by a male Australian, his 12:59.43 just four seconds outside Craig Mottram’s outright national record. His time on Boston University’s fast becoming legendarily fast track, the sixth such clocking by an Australian – three for Mottram, two for Stewie McSweyn – was the first such time run under the roof.
View this post on Instagram
Then there’s Ky Robinson’s 7:30.38 3000 behind Grant Fisher’s recent world record, again at Millrose and just a couple of seconds short of McSweyn’s outright national record. Or Jude Thomas running a 3:51.19 mile and a 13:09.36 5000 within a week.
As might be expected when the likes of Jess Hull and Linden Hall are involved, there’s been no shortage of fast times on the women’s side. Despite battling an untimely bout of illness, Hull produced an 8:30.91 for 3000 at the Millrose Games while Hall broke 15 minutes with a 14:58.43 for 5000 metres at Boston Uni.
View this post on Instagram
Any way you look at it, these are impressive performances. Shoes, banked turns and bicarb may all have been contributing factors but you just can’t ignore indoor racing any more (if you ever could). And, of course, we’re talking Australians only at this point and performances in the USA only. Across the Atlantic in Europe a fellow named Ingebrigtsen has been doing pretty big things too, like a mile world record breaking the 1500 mark en route.
If indoor athletics ever was just a means to break the monotony of winter training with some hard racing it sure ain’t so any longer. Interestingly, in this it follows the world cross-country championships which if ever it was a race to test the quality of your winter training base, is now a flat-out blast against the world’s best not far from peak form. You can’t beat the likes of Kiplimo and Cheptegei off a diet of high winter mileage (or summer mileage if you’re coming from here).
If you’re looking for the pivotal moment in the transition of indoor athletics from a means to an end to a goal in its own right, then the year 1985 might be as good a place as any to start. That was when the IAAF (as World Athletics was then known) established the World Indoor Games which, two years later, morphed into the world indoor championships. The Indoor Games were held in Paris and, for Australians anyway, were highlighted by the victory of Mike Hillardt in the 1500 metres.
The first world indoor championships were staged in Indianapolis in 1987. So, Nanjing 2025 will make it an even four decades in which there has been a world championships at which to aim. A significant factor which, coupled with the standardisation of tracks at 200 metres with banked turns, has been reflected in higher performance levels. While not approaching the depth or breadth of the outdoor world championships, indoor/short track competition has been greatly enhanced by having its own championships.
Australia at the world indoor championships is another matter. We’re in that half of the world which, climate-wise at least, has no compelling need for indoor training and competition facilities, hence very little – in fact, none – indoor athletics. There were sporadic attempts – several meetings were conducted in Melbourne in the 1930s, Emma George set a couple of indoor pole vault world records early in her career in a facility set up in a school gymnasium – but nothing sustained.
Probably the first Australian athletes to be exposed to organised indoor competition were those who took up US college scholarship offers after the second world war. Morris Curotta, a teenage phenomenon who made the London 1948 Olympic 400 final as a teenager, went to Seton Hall in New Jersey. Kevan Gosper attended the University of Michigan. A little later, Landy-era miler Jim Bailey was an early Bill Bowerman athlete at the University of Oregon.
Ron Clarke competed regularly on the US indoor circuit as it existed in the 1960s when it took in both East and West Coast. Ralph Doubell adapted readily to indoor racing, notching many wins against very few losses on his tours a few years later. As college sports opened up for women with the passing of Title IX, a law stipulating equal opportunities for men and women in sport, Australian women increasingly accessed the US college system as their male counterparts had done several decades earlier.
Now, for the past 20-30 years, Australia has regularly sent teams to the world indoor championships. As already noted, Mike Hillardt was a gold medallist at the World Indoor Games and he has been succeeded by Kerry Saxby Junna (3000W/1989), Melinda Gainsford-Taylor (200/1995), Tamsyn Manou (800/2008), Fabrice Lapierre (lj/2010), Steve Hooker (pv/2010), Sally Pearson (60h/2012) and Nicola Olyslagers (hj/2024).
What will Nanjing 2025 bring? Well, at least we’ll be able to watch it in our own time zone, a luxury not enjoyed since the 1999 championships in Maebashi, Japan.
