Connolly and Co Eye Fast Lane in Melbourne

For Ella Connolly and a host of Australia’s current and future sprinting stars, it’s life in the fast lane at Athletics Australia’s sprints and relay camp in Melbourne this week – culminating with a sprints buffet at Saturday’s Melbourne Track Classic.

The program features multiple races over 100m and 200m for both men and women, along with the highly anticipated 4x100m relays, with the resurgent Connolly forced to assess her options with coach Mark Ladbrook after a scorching start to the season.  

Having set personal bests in the 100m (11.25), 200m (22.95) and 400m (52.21) to date this season, the 21-year-old has emerged as the woman to beat on the Australian sprinting scene – recording 17 wins from 18 races so far this season.

“I had a tough three years with various injuries, but I’m just so happy to be back on the track and back competing,” Connolly says.

It’s a modest assessment of what has been a remarkable return to the senior ranks after a promising junior career, but with Connolly set to run the 200m and 4x100m events in Melbourne – she has no intentions of slowing down.

“There’s great depth in women’s sprinting in Australia, and we are looking to run a fast time in the 4x100m in Melbourne. All the girls get along really well so hopefully we can put together a good race,” Connolly says.

“It’s so exciting to see the juniors running extremely well. When everyone is running fast it pushes you to run faster yourself, so the fact that we have so many girls coming through makes the competitions awesome because the standard is rising.”

Inadvertently surfacing as a leader in the Australian ranks off the back of a series of swift performances, Connolly has thrived after a move to the Gold Coast to train alongside Alex Beck and Monique Quirk under the guidance of Ladbrook – with her focus fixed firmly on the 100m/200m for 2022 World Athletics Championships and Commonwealth Games.

“Sydney Track Classic was Mark’s decision to run the 400m. It had been a while so I enjoyed running it again, but I’ve definitely been loving running 100m’s and 200m’s – which is the focus for the season,” Connolly said.

“He’s not getting another 400m.”

Connolly headlines a stacked 200m field which features fellow Queenslanders Bree Masters (Ryan Hoffman), Torrie Lewis (Gerrard Keatign), Kristie Edwards (David Reid) and Monique Quirk (Mark Ladbrook), along with the Victorian duo of Nana Owusu-Afriyie (Tony Marsh) and Mia Gross (John Nicolosi), and New Zealand’s Rosie Elliot.

The sprinting action is not limited to just the women at the Melbourne Track Classic, with youthful exuberance in the Peter Norman Memorial 200m – including the rapid junior duo of Aidan Murphy (Peter Fitzgerald) and Calab Law (Andrew Iselin).

Murphy shattered Fred Martin’s Australian Under 20 record when recording a blistering 20.41 (-1.3) last month, whilst Law laid down a scorching 20.67 (+0.3) two weeks ago – cementing the juniors as the two fastest 200m-men in the country this year.

Alex Hartmann (Travis Venema) holds a season’s best of 20.73, whilst 21-year-old Jake Doran (Paul di Bella) has gone 20.85. Victorian champion Dhruv Rodriguez-Chico (Tom Morehouse) and Michael Romanin (John Nicolosi) add depth to a strong field, whilst 18-year-old Cooper Sherman (Neville Down) will be out to better his career best 21.11 from December.

Tokyo Olympian Jun Yamashita (Japan) rounds out the Peter Norman Memorial 200m.

Australia’s top sprinters are currently in Melbourne and will remain here through to the Melbourne Track Classic ahead of the Australian Track and Field Championships beginning in March 26.

By Lachlan Moorhouse, Athletics Australia
Posted: 17/03/2022