When the stadium clock stopped at 14:06.76, 17-year-old Lucas Chis did not raise his arms or search for a camera. He simply bent at the waist, hands on knees, and exhaled. The time was fast enough to break the Australian Under 18 5000m record: a mark formerly held by Mark Thompson (14:20.0 in 1996) and Ryan Gregson (14:14.35 in 2007), and most recently by national 10km road record holder Sam Clifford, who ran 14:07.92 in 2019.
It was also a qualifying time for the World Under 20 Championships.
For Chis, still in only his third year of formal training, it was something more intimate: a confirmation that his rapid ascent in the sport was not a fluke or a phase, but the beginning of a career.
Chis finished fifth against senior athletes that night, clinging to the pack until the final lap, just behind Queensland’s Callum Davies, the former national 5000m champion who won in 14:00.78. There was nothing cautious about the way Chis raced. He put himself where he did not strictly belong, and stayed long enough to prove that he did.
That he reached this point at all is improbable.
That he reached it this quickly is the mystery that Australian distance running is now trying to understand.
A sport he didn’t mean to find
For most of his childhood, Chis’s sporting identity rested on a soccer pitch. He began at age five, progressed into elite youth academies, and spent several nights a week drilling technique and tactics. By 12, he was weary of it, despite being in a highly representative successful team.
“I just got sick of constantly winning by huge margins,” he said. “It sounds strange, but it got boring.”
Two years followed with no structured sport. He stayed home more, drifted a little, and thought of athletics as something “other people” did.
In late 2022, a health teacher suggested he enter the Victorian All Schools Championships. Chis declined. The teacher emailed his parents anyway. His mother signed him up for every event from 400m to 3000m.
Only on the drive to the track did his father turn to him and ask, “Do you have any spikes?”
“What are spikes?” The younger Chis had never heard the word.
They stopped at a local sporting goods store and bought the only pair available.
He then finished third in both the 800m and 1500m. Something dormant had been uncovered.
The architecture of improvement
When Chis began training in a structured way at the start of 2023, the changes came quickly. He was second at the Victorian Championships and reached the national final over 800 meters. But his progress was not effortless, and he does not describe it that way.
“I’m pretty hard on myself,” he said. “Every session feels like it matters.”
His father became an unofficial motivator and, at times, antagonist — the presence urging one more rep, one more hill, one more surge at the end of a long run.
“There were plenty of times I wanted to just give up and go home,” Chis said. “Lots of sessions led to vomit after vomit. But I’m very grateful for it.”
A strong 2024 on the track meant that with further improvement over the winter of 2025, Chis’s results had grown difficult to ignore. Chis ran 14:08 on the certified course at the Athletics Victoria XCR Lakeside 5km road race June. He then dominated the Australian Under-18 Cross Country Championships in Ballarat, moving decisively in the final kilometres as though surprised at how easily the field gave way. These performances suggested he was no longer simply precocious. He was becoming formidable.
A blackout, a breakthrough, and a mystery time
Back in April, at a Victorian Milers Club meet at Doncaster, the stadium lights failed with 450m to run in the main 1500m race of the meet. Officials could not operate the photo finish system. The race continued anyway, runners cutting through the dark amidst phone lighting in a scene that felt half athletics meet, half urban folklore.
It’s been estimated from a single clock that the winner, Seth O’Donnell ,ran roughly 3:36. Chis, in second, was believed to be around 3:42, well clear of his official best of 3:43.70 run at the Maurie Plant Meet earlier in the season.
The time is unofficial. The reputational swing it produced — in the athletes’ favour and at the VMC’s expense — was unmistakable.
It was one of many evenings, off the back of having already taken out the Victorian open 1500m and mile titles, where coaches were saying aloud what many had already suspected: Chis was arriving faster than anyone anticipated.
A coach a state away
Chis trains in Melbourne but is coached by Ben St Lawrence, the two-time Olympian and former Australian 10000m record holder, who lives in Sydney. Their partnership began in Fiji at the 2024 Oceania Championships, where a nervous teenage Chis approached St Lawrence with a question about race strategy.
“He was just so comforting and seemed like he had so much knowledge,” Chis said.
What began as advice became mentorship and then a formal coaching relationship conducted largely over phone calls, messages and training logs.
“I think both Ben and I connect just from how much we love running, all the little details and specifics,” Chis said.
“We’ve managed to build a really good relationship where we talk consistently through the week about everything running. He has definitely made such a big difference in my running and without him I would not be where I am now, so very very grateful for all his input.
St Lawrence’s influence shows in Chis’s training consistency, his pacing maturity, and a quiet, deliberate approach to racing that belies his age.
The record that reframed expectations
National age records often predict future brilliance, but they can also be deceptive. Some juniors burn bright before fading. Some arrive too early. Some never adjust to senior ranks.
Chis is unusual for reasons that extend beyond his times.
He has range: from 800m to 5000m on the track, while extending his ability to the road and cross country.
He has emotional calm, or something indistinguishable from it.
And he races adults without hesitation.
The 14:06 that re-wrote the Australian U18 lists was not a time trial (the race actually started slowly), nor one weighted in his favour. It was a fight he chose. It was also fast enough to qualify for the 2026 World Under 20 Championships, even if Chis’s main ambition is to make the team in the 1500m.
He speaks about the goal with realism, but not uncertainty.
“There are so many class runners now that it will be challenging,” he said. “But I am up for it.”
A teenager entering Year 12 with a world ahead of him
Chis has just completed Year 11, with the academic demands of his final year of school ahead. Athletics complicates things, or clarifies them, depending on the week.
Outside running, there’s not many distractions.
“I play the drums,” he said. “But so much of my life is based on running now, which I honestly really like.”
The idea of running professionally — a dream many teenagers harbor — is one he articulates without hesitation.
“I want to pursue this dream,” he said. “Becoming a professional is something I definitely want to do.”
In another context, that might seem naïve. In Chis’s case, it feels more like a young man reading a map and seeing his own coordinates marked clearly.
What comes next
Australian distance running is experiencing a generational shift, with athletes like Ryan Gregson, Jess Hull, Linden Hall, Olli Hoare and Stewart McSweyn making Olympic 1500m finals over the past three Games, redefining global expectations of what Australian middle distance runners can do on the track. Beneath them, the country is producing teenagers whose accomplishments would have felt implausible a decade ago.
Chis is part of that cohort, but also slightly apart from it – not because he is better, but because his story bends in a different direction. He came late, improved quickly, and carries himself as though each breakthrough is less a surprise than an obligation he has just now discovered.
The night he broke the record, he did not celebrate. He exhaled, shook hands with competitors, walked off the track, and began thinking about the next race, the next time, the next plan.
For a runner who once walked into a sporting goods store asking what spikes were, it felt entirely in character.
And for those watching the future of Australian middle- and long-distance running, it felt like a beginning.
