Images courtesy of Fred Etter
The Australian mile championships returned to the domestic ciruit after a COVID induced hiatus, with Izzy Thornton-Bott and Cameron Myers claiming their maiden national titles.
Thornton-Bott stepped onto the track at The Crest in Sydney on Saturday night for the Albie Thomas Mile after a strong college cross country season that saw her finish 36th in the NCAA Championships just three weeks ago. Wearing her University of Oregon kit, the 24-year-old crossed the line in 4:35.36 ahead of Jaylah Hancock-Cameron (4:36.12) in a tactical race.
“I’d be lying if I said I went in feeling my freshest, I’m definitely at the tail event of a heavy season right now,” Thornton-Bott told Athletics NSW.
Aynslee Van Graan took the bronze medal in a photo finish from 15-year-old Fleur Cooper, with just seven-thousandths-of-a-second separating the two. Cooper’s 4:38.39 was a NSW Under 16 record.
In the men’s race it was 16-year-old Cameron Myers from the ACT who took victory by over a second ahead of former Australian 800m record holder Joseph Deng and Victorian William Lewis.
Myers was just outside his personal best with his 4:07.04 winning time, while Deng clocked 4:08.44 and Lewis 4:08.47.
The fields for both events failed to attract truly national fields, with only four of the 24 athletes in the men’s and women’s races residing outside of NSW.
Earlier in the program 15-year-old Ivy Boothroyd set a new NSW Under 16 record in the 800m with a 2:04.90 performance. Boothroyd was in a close contest with World Junior finalist Hayley Kitching, before Kitching fell approaching the finishing line.
In international track action, Ky Robinson recorded a fast 13:11.53 to win the 5000m at the Boston University Sharon Colyear-Danville Season Opener indoor meet. The performance was ten seconds faster than the Stanford based athlete’s outdoor personal best and within reach of the fast 13:07.00 qualifying standard for the 2023 World Championships in Budapest.
Photo Gallery
A big gallery of photos courtesy of Fred Etter. Subscribe to our mailing list for free high resolution downloads.
Replacement Spikes
FAST & FREE DELIVERY
[wcepe_products ids=’399,313,668′ columns=’3′]
Latest posts:
- Ballarat: By the numbers
People will remember Haftu Strintzos’s win, but not his time of 32:14. Ten kilometres in thirty-two minutes and change is a time you’d run through in training session, at well slower than the Australian record holder’s marathon pace. At Victoria Park it won a national title. The mud at Ballarat did what mud always does: - Summer just around the corner as 26/27 dates announced
A big summer of athletics is on the cards for 2026/27 leading into Sydney hosting the Australian Championships in early April. The Harbour City was today announced as the host venue again after last year’s successful meet on the newly resurfaced Sydney Olympic Park Athletic Centre. The venue is the most prominent host of the - Strintzos and Campbell claim first Australian titles in BallaratAustralian marathon record holder Haftu Strintzos and City2Surf winner Holly Campbell are now national championships following victories at the Australian Cross Country Championships in challenging conditions in Ballarat. Running on a rain drenched course, with several segments turned to a quagmire, Strintzos covered the 10km course in 32 minutes, 14 seconds, while Campbell ran 38
- Old school ties: Marks and Strintzos meet again at BallaratLong before either of them was a national record-holder or a sub-61 half marathoner, Haftu Strintzos and Ed Marks and were two Melbourne schoolboys at Wesley College and Haileybury College getting muddy in their school’s cross country program. Marks remembers how those races usually finished. “Haftu… we used to run together back in high school,
- Seven for Her, Ten for Him. Athletics’ last unequal event?
When Jim Thorpe won the first Olympic decathlon in Stockholm in 1912, King Gustav V of Sweden reportedly told him: “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.” The title stuck. Steve Ovett, needling his mate Daley Thompson decades later, offered the alternative view: nine Mickey Mouse events and a slow 1500m. Somewhere between
