Australian Olympian Ed Trippas finished seventh in the men’s 3000m steeplechase at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Ed started running when he joined Little Athletics at eight years of age. He began steeplechase at 15 and two years later ran a time of 5:55 (2000m steeple) and a brilliant 9:04 for the 3000m steeplechase a few months later. Both performances earned him national medals. In 2017 he made his international debut in the junior event at the World Cross Country Championships. Later that year he commenced an Economics degree at Princeton University and is due to graduate in mid-2022.
In his first summer at Princeton he made a slight improvement to 9:00 minutes, but in 2019 in his second summer he ran three consecutive PBs including a 17 second drop to a stunning 8:33.90.
In 2020 he was running well indoors until COVID hit and he suffered a variety of injuries. He travelled back to Australia in late 2020, four months before the Australian Championships which doubled as the Olympic trials.
After running a couple of 3:50 1500s in late February his first steeple in March was a modest 9:01. But three weeks later signs were good with him progressing to 8:36, then a PB 8:31 and bronze in the national championships. Back in America, having ‘redshirt’ his college season, he dropped to 8:26.25 in late May in Oregon. Then in June it was off to Europe to race and after a modest start in Nice, on the very last day of qualification for the Tokyo Olympics he smashed out 8:19.60, easily an Olympic qualifier and the third fastest in Australian history.