AS he prepares to jet out to Europe to observe the Budapest World Athletics Championships, New South Wales Institute of Sport (NSWIS) Senior Athletics Coordinator Michael ‘Pez’ Perry – a former national triple jump champion who represented Australia at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games – ran his thumb over the form of the Institute’s athletes.

NSWIS: What have been your thoughts on the way NSWIS athletes have been performing in Europe?

Pez: It’s a follow on from how the athletes performed at the Tokyo Olympics – it’s been an ever-growing increase in sustained performances, which has been great. The hope is that it continues into the world championships and then flows on into Paris. The athletes who are in Europe have put in some extremely good performances, and that’s from a world ranking perspective as well. It shows they’re tracking in the right direction, and it will now be a matter of them performing on the day in Budapest in a few weeks.

NSWIS: I know you’ve scrutinised our athletes’ every result as they’ve been posted, so what are you expecting at Budapest?

Pez: Championship competition is very different to the one-off meets, like the Diamond Leagues, but I feel the athletes who’ll be at the pointy end come Budapest will have done enough championship competition in recent times to get them through. I’m expecting the female high jumpers – Nicola Olyslagers and Eleanor Patterson to be both standing on the podium, in what order will be up to them to decide. You have our male high jumper Brandon Starc, who is starting to find form again; Mackenzie Little seems to throw a PB each time she competes, so I think she’ll be chancing for a medal. Then there is Jessica Hull. It is hard to know how her two races will be run, whether it will be run tactically or straight pace, but I’d expect her to figure in the finals of both the 1500m and 5000m events.

NSWIS: Jessica Hull has been unstoppable – smashing records around the world with the regularity of a butter fingered waiter breaking plates – what’s your take on her form?

Pez: Like a lot of others, I’ve watched Jess with interest this year, given that she stepped away from her coach and training group to branch out to be self-coached and do stuff by herself. I’ve had a bit of contact with Jess over the last few months – where she’s been based in Teddington, England since the Doha Diamond League. She has a really good set up there and has taken some local athletes from Wollongong to train with her.  She really hasn’t taken a backwards step, and I think it’s fair to say that, results wise, she has become an even better athlete this year. We’ve been discussing her world champs schedule, as she has the 1500m final on the night of August 22, but 13 hours and 40 minutes later she has the heats of the 5000m on. So, it’ll be a matter of nailing how she can best utilise that time in doing the relevant recovery, eating, and hopefully get a good night’s sleep, to be able to get up, get on the bus, go on the track and perform at about 11am the next day. It will be a challenge, she knows what she is up against, but Jess is a professional and she has thought a lot about how that is going to pan out and has considered several different options to cope with any obstacles during this period.

NSWIS: It sounds like the conditions in Europe this summer haven’t been great for Rohan Browning (pictured above) and the sprinters.

Pez: The weather has been quite harsh with heatwaves, and it appears whenever they race the sprinters have been running into blustery winds, a head wind or it rains! From what I’m hearing from Nice in France, where Rohan and his coach Andrew Murphy are based, he’s been training very, very well. NSWIS Senior Sports Biomechanist Emma Millett is over there helping to get those final little things in place. But he is training extremely well, and I’m excited to see what will come from that in the next few weeks.

NSWIS: Sarah Carli, 400m Tokyo Olympics hurdler, has been impressive and great to see she’s booked a spot for Budapest.

Pez: That has been a huge achievement! Not only did Sarah qualify for the world champs but she beat her PB from prior to her [life threatening] accident before the Tokyo Olympics when she’d run her previous best. It was awesome to see how well she ran in Finland – taking half a second off her PB. That was a huge step for her, physically and mentally, I can remember the day when I received the phone call about her accident and having conversations with our doctors. While there was a bit of an ‘unknown’ about how she would recover – and the priority was always her health and wellbeing – no-one thought what she’s doing now was remotely possible. An incredible feat.

NSWIS: Mackenzie Little is doing incredibly well, but her travelling to and from Europe to compete   isn’t only ensuring a good bump of frequent flyer points, but it’s defying logic.

Pez: I was speaking to NSWIS High Performance manager Andy Burns earlier and he was saying how rough the jet lag has been after returning from the World Para Archery Championships in Europe. And I think that highlights how much Mackenzie has achieved flying to Europe, coming back, continuing her Medicine studies at university, then flying back to Europe, then throw and return to Sydney. It is a phenomenal effort, and it goes against all training principles known. But Mackenzie has put together a series of competitions over the last few months, where she has also achieved an Olympic qualifier, which removes a lot of pressure for the coming 12 months. Mackenzie is also fortunate in that she has a world champion who she can compete against at home in Kelsey Lee-Barber, but I feel she’s ready to make her mark at this year’s world champs.

NSWIS: You mentioned the showdown between Australia’s reigning high jump world champion Eleanor Patterson and our Tokyo Olympic silver medallist Nicola Olyslagers. It’s going to be exciting.

Pez: Very exciting. I thought it was awesome to see Eleanor – in just her second competition back from her foot injury that sidelined her for a while – jump 1.96m in the recent Diamond League in Monaco. Nicola has gone from strength to strength, and outside of losing on a countback at the Silesia Diamond League, she’s been unbeaten all year. I think it’s fine to say she left Australia in a lot better head space and physically better than she did last year for the world champs. She had COVID last year, a few health problems off the back of COVID, and [on a more positive note] she got married. It all conspired against her preparing how she would have liked, and she also had a calf issue at the Commonwealth Games, but she has come back so much stronger than last year. Erin Shaw will make her senior team debut at 18. She set up her world rankings points from the World Under 20s last year, where she came fourth, and she put in some great performances in at some European Indoor meets earlier this year. Erin and the other high jumpers have been based in Europe since the start of July and she’ll benefit from the experience of a senior championship.

NSWIS:  There’s other NSWIS athletes including long jumper Samantha Dale, triple jumper Connor Murphy, sprinter Ella Connolly, and race walker Allanah Pitcher. How are they tracking? 

Pez: Connor Murphy jumped 16.40m to finish fourth at the World University Games in Chengdu, China, but, unfortunately, Connor’s position in the world rankings has seen him slip out of the qualification bubble for world champs and will have to wait for all entries to be confirmed to see if he can receive a late entry into the championships.

Samantha Dale is one of the athletes within the bubble, her spot was solidified where her ranking was updated at 28th out of 36 available spots. She jumped well last week with a jump of 6.46m, which was really good to see. She’s also working with Emma Millett, and while it has been a tough month, I think Samantha is getting things going at the right time, it will be a matter of Sam getting her run up sorted with a bit of confidence and I expect we’ll see her doing well.  Ella Connolly will run in both the 200m and women’s 4 x 100m relay team and I think her decision to come to Sydney to work with Andrew Murphy’s group is paying off. Allanah Pitcher is 19, and she’ll be competing in the 35km walk, which can still be considered a new event for women athletes. She’s been over in St Moritz, Switzerland with the other National team walkers since July, where they will be coming down from altitude soon and meet up with the rest of the Australian team in Montpellier. Allanah broke the Australian record when she competed in her first 35km race in Wajima, Japan, so I am looking forward to seeing what she can do in her second attempt at the distance.

Daniel Lane, NSWIS

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