By Len Johnson
Had I been briefed the day before the Zatopek meeting on what to expect, it might – with apologies to Maxwell Smart, secret agent 86 of Control – have gone something like this.
“You’ll be assailed by music from the moment you enter the stadium. There’ll be pop-up installations and spectators in the middle of the ground, a BBQ on the bend into the home straight belching smoke at random intervals, a beer tent on the bend into the back straight, sponsor hoardings restricting your view of the finish line and most of the home straight,” the Chief would have continued.
“And you’ll constantly be in danger of missing something important.”
To which, like Maxwell Smart, I would have responded: “And loving it.”
There was a lot not to like at the On Track Event which was the On: ZATOPEK 10. “Potentially,” I should add. Fortunately, by accident and good planning, there was a lot more to like.
To quote another speaker about an earlier occasion at Melbourne’s Lakeside venue, “I saw engagement and I saw fun and laughter, and that’s something athletics has been missing for a long time.” That speaker was no less than Lord Sebastian Coe summing up the impact of the Usain Bolt-led Nitro series conducted over three evenings back in 2017.
Back then, the crowds rolled in each night to be entertained by an innovative format of team athletics. Coe was enthusiastic about the concept. So, too, WA’s then CEO Oliver Gers. “Don’t you worry about that,” Athletics Australia was assured. “We’ll take this on.” Six months later, in the days before the London 2017 world championships, AA was informed that the world body’s Council had vetoed the idea.
Anyway, as I said, that was then, this is now. And now was mainly wow. The racing was good, highlighted, I suppose, by the performances in the open 3000 metres races by Cam Myers and Linden Hall. I’m tempted to call the duo the young and the (seemingly) ageless, but I couldn’t do that.
Speaking of the young, two young men showed their older opponents up in the men’s 800, world junior champs rep Daniel Williams winning super-impressively in 1:47.88 from Hamish Donohue, 1:48.81. Williams is from Byron Bay has just turned 17 and is already built like an Aussie Rules midfielder. Donohue is 18. We got used to Peyton Craig in a hurry earlier in Olympic year and he is now a 1:44 man. But it seems there is more to the youth revolution at 800 than just one man.
All of this was seen through a throng of spectators on the infield moving around from event to event. They saw a mixed team shot put competition which Olympic discus medallist Matt Denny was not part of the winning duo but did throw an impressive 18.40 or so to remind us that as a younger man he competed with distinction in the shot and hammer before settling on his specialty.
Then the crowd surged over to the main straight where two 60 metres sprints were conducted of which those of us sitting in the back straight saw very little apart from the gas gun bursts signifying the competitors had reached the line.
So, to the climax of the night, the two Zatopek 10,000-metre races. There’s a little more time for a race over 25 laps to build than there is for a 60-meter sprint which meant that back-straight spectators could follow a line of heads going up the main straight. And there was plenty of tactical racing to absorb.
A women’s field containing the winners of the past four Zatopeks – Rose Davies (2020 and 2021), Leanne Pompeani (2022) and defending champion Lauren Ryan – started out cautiously before developing into a cat-and-mouse affair in which some laps flashed by in 70 seconds, others dawdled along in over 80.
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With five laps to go there were still five possible winners – the recent champions plus Holly Campbell and US visitor Taylor Werner. At the bell, it was down to the championship three. Ryan moved first, hitting the gas with 300 to run. Davies, however, absorbed that surge and then responded with her own. Davies raced to the line to join Joan Cameron, Natalie Harvey, Carolyn Schuwalow and Eloise Wellings as a three-time Zatopek winner.
Jack Rayner had won three of the previous four Zatopeks and taken the national title in finishing second to Ireland’s Andrew Coscoran in 2023. Brett Robinson injected a bit of pace just around the half-way point where Rayner briefly joined him at the front. The pace dropped again and Sam Clifford, New Zealand’s Oliver Chignell and national cross-country champion Seth O’Donnell joined them in the lead.
None could withstand Rayner’s finish, however. Clear at the bell, he held on to win by some 20 metres from Clifford, with Chignell, Robinson and O’Donnell following.
Times were slow in both races but that’s of limited relevance. With World Athletics continually cutting the automatic qualifying standards (now 27 minutes for men, 30:20 for women), it is more important these days to win the national title and number one domestic ranking then chase the standard somewhere where if you catch the right train you get the standard.
And the crowd? They enjoyed it. Like Lord Coe years earlier, we saw engagement, and fun, and laughter. And it more than compensated for the limited view, the difficulty in ‘getting the splits’ and the BBQ smoke.
What’s not to like?
*Photo credit: Jack Rayner, thanks to AA.
