Australian athletes on Day 2 of the IAAF World Athletics Championships

Luke Mathews in the Men’ 800m at 5:05pm (12:05am 29 Sep AEST)

Club: St. Kevin’s Athletics Club  

Event & PBs: 800m 1:45.16 (Melbourne AUS, 5 Mar 2016), 1500m 3:35.57 (Hengelo NED, 11 Jun 2017),

Coach: Elizabeth Mathews

Social Media (Twitter/Instagram): @lukemathews95/lukewa23

International Championships & medals:

World Juniors (2014)

World Relays (2015, 2017)

World Championships (2017)

Olympic Games (2016)

Commonwealth Games (2018 bronze 800m)

Luke Mathews started doing little athletics age six-year-old. He followed his brother and sister to training and realised he was ok at it. A successful junior middle-distance runner, he burst onto the scene in the summer of 2016. He had made the semi-final of the 800 metres at the 2014 IAAF World Junior Championships, then in 2016 he improved his 800 and 1500 metres personal bests and competed briefly in Europe.

In March 2016 at the world challenge meet in Melbourne he raced the 800 metres world record holder David Rudisha, regarded as the world’s greatest ever half miler, and pushed him all the way to the line. His run was an Olympic qualifying time, a two-second personal best and the fastest time by an Australian on home soil for 34 years.

In Rio, in his senior international debut, he didn’t progress out of the heats of the 800m and 1500m. Domestically in 2017, he defended his national 800m title and then compiled a strong series of lead-up performances to the 2017 IAAF World Championships, recording PBs at 1000m, 1500m (3:35.57) and mile (3:54.53). His lead-up form continued into the world championships where he progressed to the 1500m semi-final and just missed the final by 0.31 seconds and two places. Our last finalist was 24 years ago.

Won his third consecutive national 800m title in 2018 and at the Commonwealth Games won bronze – our first medal in the event for 36 years. In 2019 started to look more toward the longer event, winning the national 1500m title, although he had only an 800m world championships qualifier.

Memorable sporting moment - sitting front row to watch my best mate win the 2016 AFL grand final…Idol - Craig Mottram. He really moulded the way for middle distance / distance athletes through the early 2000’s. He is the reason I wanted to become a professional athlete…Influence - “My biggest influence are my parents - Gavin and Elizabeth Mathews. They have sacrificed everything and put their life on hold to help me achieve my goals.”…Nickname - Lukey, Chicha…Injuries - avulsion fracture - wiped out the whole European season in 2018…Interesting fact - I have a photographic memory with what spikes people wore in certain races. If only I could somehow translate that memory into my finance exams. Coached by his mother Elizabeth Mathews.

Pete Bol in the Men’ 800m at 5:05pm (12:05am 29 Sep AEST)

Club: St. Kevin’s Athletics Club  

Event & PB: 800m 1:44.56 (Stockholm SWE, 10 June 2018)

Coach: Justin Rinaldi

Social Media (Twitter/Instagram): @pbol800/pbol24

International Champs & medals:

Olympic Games (2016)

World Championships (2017)

Peter Bol commenced his athletics journey when age 16. “Shortly after an athletics school carnival one of my teachers, Helen Leahy approached me and convinced me to join an athletics club promising to help me find a mentor, a club and a coach. I thought it was a pretty good deal specially because it meant I’d be fitter for basketball so I agreed and she delivered.”

Within a couple of year, in 2013, he won the national junior 800m title in a PB 1:48.90. He recorded his first sub-1:48 in 2014 and sub-1:47 in 2015. After placing fifth in the 2016 national championships, he chased the Olympic qualifier in Europe (standard 1:45.80). He achieved his first qualifier in Wiesbaden, Germany (1:45.78) in June and went even quicker 1:45.41 in July in Ninive, Belgium. At the Olympics, he placed sixth in his heat in 1:49.36. Domestically in 2017 he placed eighth in the national 800m title but lowered his 1500m best. Mid-year he travelled to Europe chasing a qualifier and achieved that in a PB of 1:45.21 in Germany in July. At the 2017 IAAF World Championships, he placed seventh in his 800m heat.

Injured (stress fracture) in early 2018 and after missing Commonwealth Games selection, in Europe he and training partner Joseph Deng were locked in a battle to break the nearly 50-year-old Australian 800m record. Bol started very well clocking a PB with a time of 1:44.56 in Stockholm. But Deng would beat him to the national 800m record in July. Bol won the 2019 national title and was the second fastest Australian of the year behind Luke Mathews with 1:45.56 in July 2019.

Interesting facts - “Born in Sudan, raised in Australia and consider myself South Sudanese although I’ve never been there. I speak Arabic, five siblings, lived in Egypt for four years, first name = Nagmeldin meaning star.”… Education - Construction Management and Economics (Curtin Uni 2013 to 2016)…Hobbies - bike riding, public speaking and learning/reading…Influence – “Different people at different times but I would definitely include my parents although they’ve never seen me compete much, influences comes in different forms. Justin is my second coach but ever since I’ve relocated to Melbourne has attempted to do it all for me from sports and outside.”…Advice to your young self – “If only you knew you were going to become an Olympian would you have complained that much… or gave up so many times? Just that failure is part of the game and to have that confidence to fail and to face those challenges.”

Matt Denny in the men’s discus at 5:45pm (12:45am 29 Sep AEST)

Club: QE2 Track Club

Event & PB: Discus 65.37m (Salinas USA, 28 May 16)

Coach: Ben Thomson

Social Media (Twitter/Instagram): -/mattydenny25

Occupation: Coach & student

International Champs & medals:

World Youth Championships (2013 gold discus & bronze hammer)

World Juniors (2014)

World University Games (2015 silver discus & 2019 gold discus)

Olympics Games (2016 discus)

World Cup (2018 silver discus)

Commonwealth Games (2018 silver hammer, discus)

Matthew Denny was one of the finest junior throwers in Australian history. He dominated the record books and national title lists. He was also impressive internationally, winning the World Youth Championships discus title in 2013, followed by fourth the year after at the 2014 World Junior Championships. He also won a silver medal at the Universiade in 2015.

In April 2016, he won the national discus title with a throw of 60.47m and the hammer title with 68.44m. He became just the second athlete in the near 100 years history of the event to win the double and the first since Keith Pardon in 1953 – 63 years earlier. Determined to qualify for the 2016 Olympics he travelled twice to the US, eventually qualifying with a mark of 65.37m, moving him to fifth on the Australian all-time list. In Rio, he threw 61.16m in the qualifying round.

In 2017 he made some changes, including becoming faster and more athletic. He also worked on “addressing the situation looking past it and treat it like everything is perfect; everybody has to deal with it and get used to these things,” both in training or competition. At the Commonwealth trials in February 2018, with just 14 hours separating the hammer and discus events, he required just one valid hammer throw to claim the title and automatic CG selection and also won the discus. With selection in both events he became the second Australia athlete, and first in 68 years, to compete in both events at the Commonwealth Games, following Keith Pardon who competed in the same pair at the 1938 and 1950 Empire Games.

At the Commonwealth Games he won silver in the hammer throw with a PB 74.88m and was fourth in the discus. In 2019 he decided to focus on the discus and came close to his PB with three throws over 65m (& eight over 64m). In July he won the World University Games discus title.

Training & home: Matty lives and trains on a home-made discus circle on his family’s rural Queensland property in the village of Allora, population less than 1000. Located north of Warwick, he makes the regular 350km round trip to Brisbane and the Gold Coast for competition.  He is one of eight siblings...Hobbies – cars and guitar…Occupation – Student and coach…Education: Business (Griffith Uni) & personal training (Cert 3 and 4)…Started athletics – At primary school in grade 1 or 2 throwing bean bags as shot puts and vortexes as javelins. “I was always interested in it but my focus as a kid until grade 8-9 was rugby league.”…Influence – brothers…Nickname – Matty.

Morgan Mitchell in the women’s 800m semi-final at 5:15pm (2:15am 29 Sep AEST)

Club: Western Athletics Club

Event & PBs: 800m 2:00.06 (London GBR, 21 July 2019), 400m 51.25 (Birmingham GBR, 5 Jun 2016)

Coach: Elizabeth Mathews

Social Media (Twitter/Instagram): morganmitch2/morganmitch

International Champs & medals:

World Juniors (2012)

World Relays (2014, 2015, 2017, 2019)

Commonwealth Games (2014, 2018)

World Championships (2015, 2017)

Olympic Games (2016)

Morgan Mitchell started Little Athletics when she was very young, but aged 14 put her athletics career on pause to peruse her passion for basketball and particularly netball where she was in the national U17 & U19 teams. At the same time she was progressing in athletics and represented Australia at the 2012 IAAF World Junior Championships, where she progressed to the 400m semi-finals. Netball was then put aside as she concentrated on athletics.

Two years later she’d made her senior international debut at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, she was again a semi-finalist in the 400m. She was a key member of the relay team which placed fourth in Glasgow, starting a resurgence of women’s 4x400m running in Australia.

She competed at her first global senior meet, the 2015 IAAF World Championships. She compiled a strong 2016 domestic season winning the Nationals and in June running 51.25 in Europe the fastest time by an Australian for 13 years and becoming the seventh fastest Aussie ever.

Selected for Rio, she ran well in the heat (51.30 for second) but faulted a little in the semi with 52.68 and fifth. She bounced back in the relay running flying legs of 50.97 and 50.52 in the heat and final as the team finished eighth. In 2017 she won her third national 400m title, and later raced at the World Relays and World Championships. On home soil she made the 400m semi and 4x400m final at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. But Mitchell had not been happy with her results over the last two years and decided she needed to move events or quit. The goal was the Tokyo Olympics and she didn’t care if she qualified for the 2019 World Championships on the journey.

So she switched coaches to Liz Mathews and started the event shift. She didn’t find the transition easy, graduating from around 15km a week to 60-70km a week was a challenge. The early signs were tough for Mitchell to accept, in December 2018 she ran just 2:06 in the 800m. Another 2:06 in late January was followed by some nice progress with a couple of 2:03s, then at the nationals a tremendous 2:01.60 for third place. At the World University Games in Naples she successfully negotiated three rounds to make the final, a fair challenge for an athlete new to the distance. Then 11 days later at the London Diamond League the transition was complete with a 1.54 second PB time of 2:00.06, making her eighth fastest ever and qualifying for the Doha World Championships.

Nickname – Morgz…Hobbies - Travelling, shopping, designing clothes, going to beach…Sporting relatives - Father, Walter Jr, played professional basketball in Europe, North America and Oceania…Influence - Mother, her former athletics coach Peter Burke and former netball coaches.

Sinead Diver is in the 10,000m Final at 9:10pm (4:10am 29 Sep AEST)

Club: Glenhuntly Athletics Club

Event & PBs: 10,000m 31:50.98 (Melb AUS, 13 Dec 18), Marathon 2:24.11 (London GBR, 28 Apr 19)

Coach: Nic Bideau

Social Media (Twitter/Instagram): @diversinead/diversinead

International Champs & medals:

World Championships (2015, 2017)

World Half Marathon (2018)

Born in Ireland, Sinead enjoyed climbing cliffs and swimming as a child. In later years, she played basketball and studied PE computing at the University of Limerick. She emigrated to Australia in her mid-20s in 2002 and has since worked in IT. She has two sons.

She started running in 2010 to improve fitness after the birth of her eldest son – she was 33 at the time. She then joined her sister Gráinne at a regular running event and a recreational running group called Crosbie Crew in April 2010. It is here that she met Tim Crosbie who would be her first coach.

Her first success was over 3000m in late 2011, clocking 9:49. The following year (2012) she won the national halfmarathon title and was second in the national cross country and fifth at the Zatopek. In 2014, she was second in the national cross country, clocked a half marathon personal best of 74:25 and late in the year made her marathon debut, running an impressive 2:34 to place second in Melbourne. The performance secured selection for the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, where in her international debut, aged 38, she placed an outstanding 21st. In 2017 she smashed PBs including a 2:31.37 marathon in Nagoya, followed by placing 20th in the London World Championships.

Starting in March 2018, she compiled a series of breath taking performances from 5000m to marathon. She brought her 5000m PB down to 15:23 and was third in the national title. At 10,000m she won Zatopek and the Oceania titles with a best of 31:50.98 (9th Australian all-time). In the half marathon she ran four PBs for an improvement of 4:26 minutes, five sub-70 minutes runs and moved to #7 Australian all-time. Running two marathon PBs she sliced 7:26 minutes from her PB, to become the third fastest in Australian history.

Memorable sporting moment – “Leading the 2019 London marathon for 23km”…Influence – “Probably my coach Nic - He’s opened up a lot of opportunities for me in racing and training.  With his help I get to race overseas a lot more and get invited to important races. I also started training with his squad in Melbourne (MTC) last year and this has had a significant impact on my career.  I love training with this group and I’ve improved a lot since I joined them”…Advice to your young self – “Ask more questions. Be curious and more selective about who/what you listen to”…Nickname - Div/ Divy…Interesting facts - speaks Irish and French. Is a qualified secondary school teacher.

Ellie Pashley is in the 10,000m Final at 9:10pm (4:10am 29 Sep AEST)

Club: Deakin Athletics Club

Coach: Julian Spence

Event & PBs: Marathon 2:26.21 (Nagoya JPN, 10 Mar 2019), Half Marathon 69:20 (Okayama JPN, 23 Dec 2018), 10,000m 31:43.51 (Stanford USA, 2 May 2019)

Social Media (Twitter/Instagram): @ellieopash/ellieopash

International Championships:

World Mountain Running Champs (2010)

World Student Cross country (2012)

The running career of Ellie Pashley has been a gradual progression for 19 years, until the last 12 months where she has soared into the Australian top-8 all-time in the 10,000m, half marathon and marathon.

She commenced in athletics at the age of 10 when she started in Little Athletics. “I continued this until my teenage years, then ran cross country etc in high school among other sports. I gradually moved into longer distances and marathons in my mid-late twenties.” In 2010 she made her Australian debut competing in the World Mountain Running Champs and later that year clocked 35:56 at Zatopek and two years on competed at the World University XC Champ.

During 2014 to 2016 she was running times of around 34:30 to 35 minutes for 10,000m (at Zatopek) and 77 minutes for a half marathon. Aged 27, she made her marathon debut in 2016 in Melbourne, running 2:46.08 (4th). She started to progress in 2017 with PBs in the 5000m (16:14), half marathon (73:47) and significantly 10 minutes off her best in the marathon placing 13th in Berlin with 2:35.55. The progression really picked up in 2018. In March she represented Australia at the World Half Marathon Champs placing 24th with a PB 71:43. She closed the year with a stunning series of performances, commencing with a four minute marathon PB of 2:31.52 (Sept), then third at Zatopek in a 2:22 minute PB time of 32:17.81, then 10 days later a 69:20 half marathon in Japan (#8 all-time). The momentum continued in early 2019 with a 2:26.21 marathon in Nagoya, elevating her to eighth Australia all-time and nailing a Tokyo Olympic qualifier. Seven weeks later (May 2019) she ran 31:43.51 for 10,000m in American, securing a Doha world championships qualifier.

Occupation – Physiotherapist in Torquay and coach/director with RunStrongOnlineCoaching… Education - Physiotherapy Charles Sturt Uni Albury…Memorable sporting achievement - marathon PB of 2:26:21 in Nagoya exceeding expectations …Hero/idol - Sinead Diver - she’s humble, tough, doesn’t ever make excuses, and the smartest racer I know. She is also just a very down to earth person despite being an incredible athlete. And I feel very fortunate that I get to run with and against her regularly… Influence - coach Julian Spence. He got me to take running seriously and has given me the confidence to race at a much higher level than I ever thought possible.  He has managed to get me through five years of hard training so far uninjured… Other sports played – netball, basketball, swimming…Advice to your young self - I probably would have encouraged my young self to take running a bit more seriously in my late teens and early twenties. However, I may not have the same love that I have for it today had I done that.