Year in Review | Athletics Australia

2023 has been an historic and exciting year for Australian athletics with success coming from all corners of the sport. This growth and success has been most recently recognised on the global stage, with World Athletics announcing Athletics Australia as the recipient of its prestigious ‘Member Federation of the Year Award’.

We've picked just a few of our favourite moments, events and programs to recap from the year that was. Thank you to everyone within the athletics family and we hope you're ready for a massive 2024 as we get closer and closer to the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Etching her name into all aspects of the history books, Nina Kennedy’s Budapest World Championships gold will forever go down in athletics history. The pole vaulter shared an iconic world title with the USA’s Katie Moon after shattering her own Australian record twice in the one competition to clear 4.90m – forcing her name into the top-10 women’s pole vaulters in history on the biggest stage possible. The performances remain the joint world lead for 2023.  

Landing down under for the first time in its 44-edition history and breaking the 27-year drought since the last World Athletics Championships event was hosted in Australia, the long-awaited 2023 World Athletics Cross Country Championships proved a winner in Bathurst, New South Wales.

The planet’s best distance runners went toe-to-toe on an iconic Australian course in brutal conditions. The fan-friendly event also saw the introduction of Golden Ticket and Mass Participation races as recreational runners rubbed shoulders with the elite. 

On a redemption mission after tasting defeat on the world stage for the first time at the Tokyo Paralympic Games, James Turner kept his unbeaten streak alive at the 2023 World Para Athletics Championships in Paris, France when delivering a dominant double in the 100m T36 and 400m T36 – taking his global medal tally to 10 (nine gold, one silver).  

Maria Strong flexed their form as a versatile force at the 2023 World Para Athletics Championships, winning a medal in both the track and the field. Strong raced down the straight to a convincing win in the 100m T72, before returning days later to double down in the Shot Put F33, where they won silver in a new Oceania record. 

Oceania’s inaugural World Athletics Continental Tour Gold Level Meeting stole the show as homegrown heroes took on international stars including the world’s fastest man Fred Kerley, long jump sensation Tara Davis-Woodhall and a host of Africa’s top middle-distance talents in front of more than 6000 fans at Melbourne’s Lakeside Stadium.

2024 tickets are now on sale to get trackside, buy yours here.

With the weight of Australian athletics on their backs, the Mixed 4x2km Relay team of Stewart McSweyn, Abbey Caldwell, Jessica Hull and Oliver Hoare delivered a magnificent bronze on the rugged Bathurst terrain – cheered every step of the way as the nation cemented its status as a middle-distance powerhouse.  

Saving his best for last in 2023, Matthew Denny added shine to a golden year for Australian athletics when being crowned the Diamond League champion in the Men’s Discus, breaking the Australian record for the second time in short succession with a 68.43m effort to steal the win from global giants at Hayward Field. 

It was a rare and exciting achievement for Australia in 2023 to see two athletes on the one podium at the World Athletics Championships in the women’s high jump event with Eleanor Patterson claiming silver and Nicola Olyslagers with the bronze. 

In an impressive feat, Jessica Hull, Stewart McSweyn and Izzi Batt-Doyle wore the green and gold uniform on three occasions in 2023, on all three separate surfaces - track, road and cross country.

The 2023 Chemist Warehouse Summer Season, delivered in conjunction with our Member Associations, was a true celebration of our sport and the country’s growing love for athletics. The athletes bought the show and turned up the volume with world class performances. The crowds turned up en masse, and tuned in to the broadcast in record numbers, the result being a reinvigorated domestic season that will continue to grow. 

The Chemist Warehouse Season culminated in the 100th edition of the Australian Championships in Brisbane where more than 3,500 athletes, and almost 15,000 attendees converged for the pinnacle of our domestic season. 

Check out the 2024 Summer Season event calendar here.

Australian athletics is lucky enough to have 1,900+ technical officials on the ground assisting to deliver events both during the Australian domestic season and also on the global stage.

There are currently 42 internationally qualified technical officials with that number expected to grow as the new education and evaluation opportunities are rolled out in 2024.

Sporting Schools is a $320 million Australian Government initiative designed to help schools to increase children's participation in sport, and to connect them with community sporting opportunities.

This year Sporting Schools delivered 950 programs, and through those programs roughly 120,000 kids participated. 

Find out more about the Sporting Schools programs.

In 2023, the First Nations Programs in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory continued to expand thanks to the support of Rio Tonto. A total of 8 Raise the Bar camps were conducted, along with 24 Athletics for the Outback programs delivering athletics clinics and coach education to multiple schools, and community groups across a range of ages in regional and remote communities.

Athletics for the Outback spanned 65 days in 2023, reaching 4,091 participants across Australia while Raise the Bar doubled in size, reaching 67 students across 40 days of programs. 

Read more about the First Nation Programs here.

A total of 5,300 coaches completed 9,688 education courses over the calendar year.

These numbers reflect the commitment of Australian coaches to ongoing learning and their willingness to sacrifice their own time to best support their athletes to achieve their best at many levels.

Find out more about the coaches programs being delivered.