Twelve months ago, Jemima Montag was recovering from hamstring surgery, watching the world championships from home. On the final day of athletics in Glasgow, she became just the second Australian race walker to win three consecutive Commonwealth Games gold medals.
And she led home an Australian clean sweep to do it.
Montag’s winning time of 42:13.40 in the 10,000m walk was a personal best, ahead of Elizabeth McMillen (42:39.87) and Rebecca Henderson (43:27.46), completing a green-and-gold lockout of the podium.
The victory gives Montag a Commonwealth treble — the 20km on the Gold Coast in 2018, and now back-to-back 10,000m titles in Birmingham and Glasgow — matching the mark set by Jane Saville, who won the 10km on the road in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 before defending the 20km in Manchester and Melbourne.
“I knew that if I wanted my third Commonwealth gold that I really needed to be on my A-game today.”
Jemima Montag
That A-game was far from guaranteed. The surgery that cost Montag her spot at last year’s world championships left her rebuilding through a truncated preparation, and against the strongest domestic field she has faced at a Commonwealth Games, there was no room for error in a six-athlete race that was always going to be tactical.
“Championships are all about racing and about being patient,” she said. “I’m now in my third Olympic cycle, so it was just about biding my time, particularly with the wind on the back straight, until it was time to win.”
Three Games, three golds, and three very different stories.
“They have all been really different. The first one I was just a baby, it was my first senior team. I was just an excitable bunny rabbit; nobody expected anything. My family said top 8 would be good. In fact, when I was leading that race my mum yelled out ‘it’s not Little Athletics, what are you doing, you can’t win.’ That surprised everyone.
“The second one in Birmingham there was the weight of expectation, but not the same competition as today. It was a job to be done, but it was an easier job.
“Today, I knew that I would have to be at my very best to get it done. So much respect to the other Aussies and how much they have progressed.”
For McMillen, 22, it was a first senior international medal, earned the hard way: from the front.
“It definitely was to push it out hard at the start and try to maintain that hard pace,” she said. “I didn’t necessarily want to sit in front for all 20 laps, but what are you going to do?”
“We only had six in the field, but those six were very impressive athletes: people who have competed at the Commonwealth Games, Olympics and World Championships before. I’m only 22, and I think there’s a big future ahead.”
Henderson, who completed the podium, said the trio had arrived with a collective goal but individual plans.
“I think we’ve all got very different strengths, so we all kind of had our own individual race plans, with the overall goal to obviously go one, two, three. Within that, who came first, second and third was very much up for grabs, depending on who really pulled it together on the day.”
Competing on the last day of the program, the walkers had spent the week watching the rest of the Australian team pile up medals.
“We’ve had a really great Games, and I think Australian athletics is really on the up,” Henderson said. “Watching Rose Davies do the double, and so many other fantastic athletes, has been really inspiring. It definitely spurred us on.”
The Melburnian also found Glasgow’s conditions strangely familiar: “The weather’s the same. I’m from Melbourne, so this is very much like Melbourne weather. It feels a little bit like home, and it’s just great to see all the Aussies in athletics doing so well. The clean sweep is the cherry on top.”
For Montag, the sweep is more than a cherry: it’s confirmation of a lineage.
“Australia is a race walking nation. I have people like Jared Tallent, Jane Saville, Nathan Deakes to look up to who have gone before us, so to sweep the podium is very cool.”
