World Title Tilt | Buschkuehl Back at Brilliant Best

On the eve of the World Athletics Championships, the storylines had been written - hometown heroes, head-to-heads, redemption missions. Yet there is no greater author than the athlete themselves, and Brooke Buschkuehl’s latest chapter just shredded the narrative.

A personal best by 8cm, a seasons best by 52cm, and the farthest wind-legal jump in the world this year – 7.13m (+1.8m/s). Performances of such calibre often require context to bridge the perception from superhumans to mere mortals, but Buschkuehl’s circumstances largely do the opposite.

“It’s always the way it is with the long jump – the jumps that feel effortless are the ones that are the furthest. I felt like I flew through the air, and where I landed, I had a bit of a gauge of where it could have been, and when I saw it was over the 7m mark, I was shocked,” Buschkuehl says.

“It’s crazy because of how hard things have been for me. I tried so hard to stay positive even though I was doubting myself for so long. We’ve got two weeks until the women’s long jump competition and I couldn’t think of a better place to be at.”

Never short for talent, the questions and doubts have always laid in the status of her health. Along with living with two auto immune conditions in Hashimoto’s disease and coeliac disease, the Australian record holder’s most productive years have been riddled by a vicious cycle of injury and surgery.

“It’s been a challenging 18 months both physically and mentally. I started getting knee pain back in December 2020 and I knew I couldn’t do much about it until post Tokyo. I managed it, but I couldn’t really train at the intensity that I wanted to because of the pain in my knee, and there were so many things in training, so many exercises and things I needed to do that I couldn’t,” Buschkuehl says.

“When I came away with the seventh-place result, I was really happy with that because I didn’t think I’d get there with the training I had done leading up to it. Post Tokyo, it was an absolute battle. I had surgery in September last year and was told that I would be running after 10 weeks. In January this year, my knee was probably the worst it had ever been in terms of pain, and it took me ages to start running again.”

The four-time Australian champion bypassed the National Championships in April having only just returned to the sandpit in a quest to regain trust and confidence in her body, determined to salvage an international campaign of good health under the guidance of her father and coach Russell Stratton.

A 6.61m season opener in May left Buschkuehl optimistic ahead of jetting overseas, but her European visit was quickly marred by illness as underwhelming results raised the question that refused to go away - would her body once again fail her mind?

In the world of athletics, answers don’t come much more emphatic than that of a world-leading result, which is exactly what Buschkuehl delivered in Chula Vista on Saturday to catapult herself into contention for the World Athletics Championships with her first personal best in six-years and four-months.

“This week, things picked up and I felt healthy. I knew if I could hop on the runway today, I could do something good. I had a few jumps in the 6.80’s, and finished off with 7.13,” Buschkeuhl says.

“It’s the furthest legal jump in the world this year. With my confidence low, I got in my head a little - I said to my Dad, who is my coach [Russell Stratton] that I may as well do it, what’s the worst that could happen. I would have been happy to come away with 6.80 so to come out and jump 7.13 was amazing.”

The performance sees Buschkuehl join Germany’s Malaika Mihambo, the reigning world and Olympic champion, as the only women to have shattered the elusive seven-metre barrier legally in 2022 – with Mihambo recording a mark of 7.09m in May.

A two-time finalist at both the Olympic Games and World Athletics Championships, Buschkuehl has pieced together the strongest of form at the unlikeliest of times, earning the right to take to the runway for a genuine world title tilt.

By Lachlan Moorhouse, Athletics Australia
Posted: 11/7/2022