Murphy Follows Father’s Footsteps, Teenager Craig Becomes an Olympic Semi Finalist
Published Fri 09 Aug 2024
Australia’s track and field athletes continued to write themselves into the history books on Day 9 of competition, with Connor Murphy becoming the first Australian triple jumper to contest the Men’s Final since his father at Sydney 2000. Peyton Craig lowered his Australian Under 20 record, while versatile queens Camryn Newton-Smith and Tori West completed their first Olympic Heptathlon and Lauren Ryan concluded her Parisian campaign with a gutsy 10,000m performance.
Triple jumper Connor Murphy (NSW, Andrew Murphy) has placed 12th in his first major championship final.
He was good on the board with all three jumps but looked a little flat through the hop and step phases, with his best jump being 16.30m. Down on his 16.80m in qualifying.
“It's been a roller coaster. Two days ago I was on the moon, you know super-stoked,” Connor said.
“I believed I could make that final and executed on that, and I was just so proud I could do that.
“And then leading into today I really believed I could jump at my best again and that was the goal. Honestly, I'm not at a level yet where I can compete with the top guys and I know that I want to be there.
“I really just wanted to jump near my best today but the body just didn't have it in it. I think I just gave everything two days ago and had no bullets left in the tank.
Connor is the first Australian male to take part in an Olympic triple jump final since his father, and coach, Andrew Murphy at Sydney 2000.
Australian middle distance runner 19-year-old Peyton Craig (QLD, Brendan Mallyon) produced another impressive run on the global stage to prove he belongs with the best in the world.
Peyton was sixth in his 800m semi-final and shaved 0.01 off his personal best time with 1:44.11. He started the year with a best time of 1:47.52 and is now only 0.12 seconds of Joseph Deng’s Australian record.
“You can't ask for much more than that, really,” Peyton said.
“Obviously being the person I am, it's a bit better sweet. I would have loved to be running in the final, but honestly, I can kind of take peace out of knowing I delivered my best today and sometimes your best just isn't good enough.
“Give me a bit more time and I'll definitely be good enough.”
In the third and last semi-final, the pace was on from Kenyan star Emmanuel Wanyonyi throughout and the top four from this race all progressed to the Olympic final - fourth place was 1:43.69.
Peyton pushed forward in the first 200m, as he’d done in the heat, and was sitting third. He had drifted to sixth with 200m to run but he was in touch and preparing for a final sprint to move up the field.
“The biggest lesson I've taken out of this is that I belong on this stage. Going in at 19 years old, I had two international races prior so I was pretty raw to the scene.
“But that heat and that semi final today shows myself I can be competitive at this level. That's something I'm going to carry with me into World Juniors (Peru at the end of the month) and then into hopefully World Champs next year.
Lauren Ryan (VIC, Lara Rogers) has finished 13th in the 10,000m Final, registering the second-best result in the event for an Australian woman at an Olympic Games.
Only Eloise Wellings when 10th at Rio 2016 has finished higher, and Lauren’s time of 31:13.25 was slighter quicker than the great run by Eloise eight years ago.
Lauren was buoyed by having family and friends in the stadium for the 10,000m final.
“It was really exciting to have everybody in the same spot cheering me on,” Lauren said.
“I just felt like everything was in place to have a great race and I feel like that's what we did.
“I executed the race probably as well as we could have, except my coach probably was like, don't lead it.”
“But I got pushed to the front and I felt comfortable enough to do it and I think it paid off because we lost a bunch of girls and it made the pack a lot smaller when it got to the end.”
Australian heptathletes Camryn Newton-Smith (QLD, Ralph Newton) and Tori West (QLD, Eric Brown and Sam Leslie) concluded their Paris Olympic journey, placing 19th (5982) and 20th (5848) in the Heptathlon respectively.
Camryn began the day in 14th position, before jumping 5.78m in the long jump and throwing the javelin 44.77m for a combined total of 5,220 points.
Tori was 21st after day one and improved one place before the 800m. She jumped 5.41m in the long jump and then threw the javelin 48.79m for a combined total of 5,038 points.
Both athletes left everything on the track on the 800m with Camryn running 2:24.63 and Tori 2:20.97.
Camryn and Tori are the first to contest this event for Australia since Beijing 2008.
By Andrew Ried, Athletics Australia and Australian Olympic Committee
Posted 10/08/2024
