In her last race before the world championships Jess Hull fell apart in the final metres to allow Nelly Chepchirchir to slip past to take the Diamond League final by three hundredths of a second.
Come the final of the world championships, if Hull stole a glance at the big screen as she entered the finishing straight she would have seen Chepchirchir and Dorcus Ewoi poised to sweep her out of the medals.
Faith Kipyegon was already away to victory in 3:52.15. Ewoi edged past the Australian to take silver in 3:54.92 and it seemed certain that for the second time Chepchirchir was about to do the same.
The momentum was all moving one way. But this time, rather than falter, Hull dug as deep as she could, gritted her teeth and held on for the bronze medal, 3:55.16 to 3:55.25. Medals are sometimes won by playing ugly.
As in her all her recent encounters with Kipyegon who, in truth, lives in another universe, Hull took up the challenge running side-by-side and then on the champion’s heels. It appeared as they got into the third lap that Chepchirchir might be able to put her in a box, but in fact while she clung to Kipyegon’s heels she would have the first chance to respond to any change of pace.
So, when Kipyegon shot clear, Hull had the drop on the other two. Ewoi got by, Chepchirchir couldn’t. By a narrow margin Hull has a second successive global medal, a feat achieved by only a handful of Australians in any event. It’s not to be sneezed at, not to be anyway underrated at all.
Without making too much of it, Hull also set
Without making too much of it, Hull also set an outstanding example of Australian middle-distance runners to follow. If you’re being hyper-critical, all our represetnatives to date have lost ground in the final straight. In heats and semi-finals at world championship level, there is rarely just one athlete there to pounce should you falter, there’s three or four.
There’s no lone sharks in these races, they hunt in packs.
Kurtis Marschall eased Australian nerves with a bronze medal in the pole vault the previous night in yet another championship which ended in yet another world record for Mondo Duplantis (the word peerless is superfluous in Mondo’s case) – 6.30 this time. We’ve waited a while for a world championship medal in Tokyo. Thirty-four years ago when the third championships were staged in Tokyo the best Australian result was sixth place.
And in the best tradition of anything you can do, we can do better, New Zealand again upstaged their trans-Tasman rival. On Monday night it was Geordie Beamish upsetting defending champion Soufiane El Bakkali to take a shock victory in the 3000 metres steeple. Last night, Olympic high jump champion Hamish Kerr took the gold medal in the high jump ahead of South Korea’s Sanghyeok Woo. The pair were tied after each cleared 2.34 on their final attempts, but Kerr got 2.36 first time and when Woo failed once at that height and twice more at 2.38 the gold was heading New Zealand’s way.