Relays on the Rise | Aussies Determined to Return to Olympic Stage after Gold Coast Camp

When it comes to athletics theatre, the 4x100m relay is box office. Chasing excellence in an event that demands risks yet punishes rashness, the nation’s fastest athletes recently assembled on the Gold Coast in a bid to strike the balance and shift the baton to Paris and beyond.

The concept of a champion team beating a team of champions is often reserved for the scriptwriters, but the adage largely underpins what Australia’s fastest men and women are trying to achieve in a year that features the World Relay Championships, Olympic Games and World Under 20 Championships.

Based out of the Gold Coast for a series of relay camps this season supported by the Gold Coast City Council and Commonwealth Games Australia's Green2Gold2Great program, Athletics Australia’s High Performance Relay Coach (4x100m Men) Craig Pickering is not short of belief when it comes to the country’s relay stocks – embracing teamwork, technique and timing over raw speed.

“There are basically two approaches to relays depending on your talent pool. The first one is to get the four fastest athletes you have, put them on the track and hope for the best. The other is to spend a lot of time working on the technical aspect, which is what we are doing,” Pickering said.

“Our approach is to get to a core group of athletes on the men’s side who can run between 10.1-10.2, and a core group for the women’s side who can run 11.1-11.3. The goal is then to save around 2.8-seconds on the changeovers and very quickly we are down under 38-seconds for the men and 42-seconds for the women.”

The numbers merely fuel the confidence and investment of a rising sprinting crop, who have already delivered a pair of Australian Under 20 records in 2024 by both the men (39.12 – Cody Hasler, Frankleen Newah-Jarfoi, Sebastian Sultana, Gout Gout) and women (44.49 – Chelsea Scolyer, Olivia Dodds, Olivia Inkster, Jessica Milat).

“What we see is that the junior athletes want to be part of the senior relay teams, they see that as their initial route into teams. They are always keen to be involved and as they transition to the seniors, they bring that energy with them,” Pickering said.

“We would hope to get two medals from the two 4x100m teams at this year’s World Under 20 Championships. If you look at the 4x400m as well, where there are men’s, women’s and mixed races – we have got a lot of depth coming through there too.”

For the team of Athletics Australia 4x100m Coaches headed by David Reid and including Cathalina Walsh (4x100m women), the training camps are a key opportunity to develop both skills under pressure and culture.

“The main gains are in the practice, but we recognise that to get people to want to come to the practice and to make the relay important, we need to have a culture of continuous learning and improvement,” Pickering said.

“Everyone knows their value and is pulling towards the goal of qualifying for the Olympics. We want to push for a final on the men’s side, and probably in that top-six for the women.”

Identifying Jacob Despard and Josh Azzopardi as key leaders on the men’s side of the program, Pickering also touched on the importance of athletes like 2016 Olympian Alex Hartmann:

“Someone like Alex Hartmann has bags of experience and brings a lot to the camp. He has been there before, he has really good skills and is pretty level-headed – that becomes infectious.”

The first stop on the international stage will be the World Athletics Relay Championships to be held in the Bahamas this May, where Australia will battle for finals berths to secure their position at the Olympic Games in Paris in July.

The relay camp on the Gold Coast was supported by the Gold Coast City Council as well as Commonwealth Games Australia's Green2Gold2Great program.

By Lachlan Moorhouse, Athletics Australia
Posted: 12/3/2023