Championship 1500m races are interesting things, as Cameron Myers and Jess Hull demonstrated in different ways on the second day of the 2026 Australian Championships in Sydney.
If you’re the best, do you run from the front, or kick home with superior speed and strength?
Cameron Myers chose the option of running everyone off their feet.
Only national record holder Olli Hoare gave chase, but Myers was mercurial over the final lap to pull away for an almost 3 second win in 3:29.85, less than half a second outside Hoare’s national record.
The win secures Myers’s automatic selection for the Commonwealth Games.
“To do this in front of a home crowd and the way I did it, is awesome,” Myers said.
“It took me a while this year to get going, but I’ve got going now and hopefully this shows I will be a real contender in the European season.
“It’s awesome the sport is in such a good position and I hope it grows year after year.”
The women’s race was a contrast.
In a kicker’s race anything can happen.
Unfortunately for Jess Hull, it did, losing her feet while in the lead with 50m to run.
Hull made the running on the final lap off a pedestrian pace. But although looking likely to win she hadn’t broken the field. Claudia Hollingsworth, with no run to pass Hull on the inside, side-stepped into lane two, but accidental clipped Hull’s heel.
The Olympic silver medallist fell heavily to the track.
“It was that slow, things happen,” Hull said in her post race interview.
“I thought I was away, I could see the shadows and I was like ‘I’ve got this’. Then I closed the rail and I went down.
“That’s racing, it happens. I’ll be better off for it because maybe don’t let it go that slow next time.”
With Hull halted and Hollingsworth off balance it looked briefly that Abbey Caldwell would stride to victory. But Hollingsworth, shaken physically and emotionally, regained composure to cross the line first.
A fast finishing Sarah Billings caught Caldwell, taking silver by 4 hundredths of a second in 4:17.36.
Some time after the day’s action finished, the results declared that Hollingsworth had been disqualified for causing Hull’s fall under World Athletics Rule 17.1.2 which covers jostling and obstruction, whether done so willfully or negligently. A subsequent appeal from Hollingsworth saw her reinstated as champion the following day.
Earlier in the day heat action almost stole the show, with Lachlan Kennedy and Delta Amidzovski setting Commonwealth Games qualifiers.
Kennedy lowered his personal best to 9.96 (+0.2) to become the first Australian to break the 10 second barrier on home soil. He starts as overwhelming favourite for the 100m title with solid runs by Joshua Azzopardi (10.22) and Rohan Browning (10.24) setting up a race for the minor medals.
“I was super relaxed it almost felt easy, so I think I have a bit more in the tank for the final,” Kennedy said.
“This is only my second one hundred of the year so we are off to a cracking start.”
Amidzovski was one and done in the long jump qualifying, leaping to 6.84m (+0.3) and fifth on the Australian All Time list with a 6.84m jump.
Deleigh Owusu captured her fourth consecutive triple jump title with a leap of 13.58m (+0.4).
Stephanie Ratcliffe took out the hammer throw in a season’s best 67.71m.
A spirited 800m run by Tori West wasn’t quite enough to claw back victory from Mia Scerri in the heptathlon, with the 21-year-old Victoria claiming her first national title in a PB of 6175 points by a 13 point margin. The mark was just 25 points short of the Commonwealth Hames qualifying standard that would have secured automatic selection. Scerri could still be selected via selector discretion for the 63 athlete open Australian team.
The men’s 400m heats were swift with only two automatic qualifying spots available in each of the three heats.
NSW’s Brenton Kerr slashed his personal best in running 45.36s to surprise Cooper Sherman (45.84) in heat one, while Luke Van Ratingen (45.25s) and Sri Lanka’s Kalinga Kumarage Hewa Kumarage (45.40s) dueled to the line in the second heat.
A stylish looking Reece Holder (45.27s) and Thomas Reynolds (45.93s) were the automatic qualifiers from the third heat.
In the women’s heats Jemma Pollard was the fastest qualifier for tomorrow’s final with a 52.47s run.
New world record holder Angus Hincksman won the para men’s 1500m in 3:51.03 from Reece Langdon, while Annabelle Colman ran a new personal best of 4:38.53 to convicingly win the women’s para race.
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