Lachlan Kennedy will try to complete the sprint double at next month’s Glasgow Commonwealth Games after nominating for the 100m and 200m on his Commonwealth Games debut.
Kennedy, the national champion in the 100m and the first Australian to dip under 10 seconds on home soil, did not contest the 200m at the Australian Athletics Championships in April.
But with national 200m record holder Gout Gout opting to miss the Glasgow Games to focus on the Under-20 world championships in August, 22-year-old Kennedy has added it to his slate, having beaten Gout over the distance in a blockbuster clash at the Maurie Plant Meet in March.
Kennedy’s personal best of 20.26 in the 200m would have won bronze at the last Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
Australia’s first 11 track and field competitors were named based on the results of the national championships in April, and the rest of the 86-strong team has now been locked in, a month before the start of the Glasgow Games.
Check out the full athletics team.
Australia’s newly flush sprinting stocks have resulted in heartbreak for Josh Azzopardi, with the 26-year-old missing out on a solo Commonwealth Games debut next month, despite finishing second in the 100m at the national championships.
At that Sydney meet, Azzopardi finished between Kennedy and ahead of four-time national 100m champion Rohan Browning.
Josh Azzopardi beat Rohan Browning in the 100m final at the national championships in April. (Getty Images: Cameron Spencer)
But Browning has been given the nod ahead of 2024 Paris Olympics running mate Azzopardi, along with Kennedy and all-conditions record holder Eddie Nketia, who will represent Australia for the first time since changing allegiances from New Zealand in December.
Nketia has twice gone far under 10 seconds with illegal tailwinds this year while sprinting for the University of Southern California, with his strong form in the US National Collegiate Athletic Association earning him a spot.
Browning, meanwhile, competed in the 100m at the past two Olympic and two Commonwealth Games, with his personal best of 10.01 at the 2021 Tokyo Games ranking fourth among Australians in history.
But Azzopardi’s personal best of 10.09, which he ran for the second straight year at the Perth Track Classic in February, is 0.1 of a second faster than Browning’s season’s best of 10.19 from that national championships final.
In May, Azzopardi won the 100m at the Oceania Athletics Championships for the second time in Darwin, but it was not enough to earn him a spot in the 100m event, which would have marked his first time running a solo event at a Commonwealth Games.
Josh Azzopardi became a two-time Oceania champion in May. (Getty Images: Andy Cheung)
Azzopardi was a member of Australia’s 4x100m relay at the 2022 Birmingham Games — where they failed to finish their heat after Browning fell at the start of his anchor leg — and set a national 4x100m relay record with Browning, Kennedy and Chris Ius at the World Relays in May to book a ticket to the 2027 world championships.
Azzopardi and Ius are both travelling to Glasgow as 4x100m relay specialists.
Another of Australia’s most competitive fields, the women’s middle-distance races, left selectors with some tough calls.
Jessica Hull will run the mile and the 5,000m at the Commonwealth Games. (AAP: Dean Lewins)
Unlike Nketia, elite form in the US college scene was not enough to earn 21-year-old Hayley Kitching a spot despite having comparable 800m times to Sarah Billings and Claudia Hollingsworth, who have been added to the team after finishing behind Abbey Caldwell at the national championships.
But Billings will be the only women’s runner in the 800m after Caldwell and Hollingsworth chose to prioritise the mile (1,600m).
Hollingsworth, Caldwell and Jess Hull will run the mile, with Hull also backing up in the 5,000m alongside Linden Hall and Rose Davies.
Hull, the 1,500m Olympic silver medallist who boasts the sixth fastest women’s mile in history, fell in the final of the 1,500m at the national championships but regrouped to win the 5,000m.
