Australia’s strongest ever team has assembled for the World Athletics Under 20 Championships starting this Tuesday, with 67 of the nation’s rising stars in Lima, Peru to light the fuse on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and the 2032 Games in Brisbane.
Led by 2024 Paris Olympians, Torrie Lewis, Peyton Craig and Claudia Hollingsworth, Australia’s Generation Next is widely tipped to better its most successful performance at an Under-20 championships: the 10 medals won in Sydney in 1996.
Lewis, fresh from her 200m semi-final in Paris, is one of five athletes on the team who also competed at the Olympics this month. The 19-year-old national champion was quick to reset her focus for Lima where she will contest the 200m and 4x100m relay.
“World Juniors was the focus for the last two years, but this year I haven’t really had a chance to think about it,” Lewis said. “I had Nationals, Diamond League, relays and the Olympics… but now that I’m finally here, I’m really glad that I have made it.”
But Lewis isn’t content to have made it this far. Having set a new Australian 100m national record of 11.10 seconds in January 2024 – surpassing Raelene Boyle’s record set at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico – she now has loftier goals. “The only way I’m going to be happy is if I get a personal best, and if I get a personal best, I think I can win a medal.”
Alongside fellow Paris sprinters Sebastian Sultana and Aleksandra Stoilova, Lewis is the secret weapon in Australia’s women’s 4x100m relay. “This junior team without me has been so successful with two national records, so they already know what they are doing,” Lewis said. “I’m just hoping to come in with a little bit of extra speed.”
Lewis’s confidence embodies Australia’s youth-led resurgence in track and field, a rise given a golden glow by performances in Paris, Australia’s best performance at a Games with 53 medals, 18 of them gold, and seven won in athletics events.
Nina Kennedy won gold in the pole vault, Nicole Olyslagers and Eleanor Patterson took silver and bronze respectively in the high jump, Jemima Montag and Rhydian Cowley claimed bronze in the mixed marathon walk relay, Montag also took bronze in the 20km walk, Matt Denny clinched bronze in the men’s discus and Jessica Hull ran to silver in the 1500m.
Now a new generation are announcing themselves, hopefully rising to the peak of their powers at the home Olympics in Brisbane in 2032.
Among them are Australia’s 4x100m men who arrive in Lima as the No 1-ranked team in the world. Craig and Hollingsworth – Paris semi-finalists and Australian under-20 800m record holders – also arrive atop the world rankings. Then there is teenage sensation Cameron Myers, the fastest under-18 over 1500m in history, who is poised to make his Australian team debut over the distance while ranked No 2 in the world.
Tipped for gold in the 10,000m race walk is 17-year-old Isaac Beacroft, who won the top prize at this year’s World Athletics race walking team championships. Competing against athletes three years older, Isaac surged late to win his world title by just one second, becoming the youngest winner since Colombian Eider Arevalo in 2010.
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Raised in the Hills district north of Sydney, Beacroft is one of six team leaders in Lima. “It’s arguably our strongest contingent ever and I think we can live up to that,” Beacroft said. “I’m feeling as confident as I can be leading into a major competition and I feel like I have done the preparation as well as I can. The main goal is to win.”
Australia’s team ranges in age from 15-year-old long jumper Mason McGroder to 19-year-old sprinter Jessica Milat who made the age cutoff by just hours with a January 1 birthday. Marley Raikiwasa is at her second under-20s championship and is ranked No 3 in the shot put and No 4 in the discus respectively.
Australia will field five relay teams in Lima through the men’s and women’s 4x100m and 4x400m events, and the mixed 4x400m relay, both squads ranked inside the world top five. The No 1 ranked men’s 4x100m team are led by Sebastian Sultana and new sensation Gout Gout, who ran a blistering 10.29 second 100m at the Queensland Athletics Championships in March.
Gout’s South Sudanese parents moved to Australia two years before he was born and comparisons to Usain Bolt have not fazed him yet. “Usain Bolt is arguably the greatest athlete of all time and just being compared to him is a great feeling,” said the Brisbane sprinter. “Obviously I’m Gout Gout so I’m trying make a name for myself.”