Australian race walker Rhydian Cowley (© Getty Images)
Australia has a young squad with exciting prospects – but success at the World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships Muscat 22 sits heavily on the shoulders of the 20km men, according to their head coach.
Brent Vallance reckons the U20 women also have hopes on 4-5 March, but for the rest, the team event is likely to come a tad too soon. The Middle East and Muscat play host to the event for the first time, but the landmark venue is also in the middle of the Australian domestic season.
Australia starts on the back foot because leading Olympian Jemima Montag will be head down over a medical textbook rather than head down over a desert road. This, despite a continental record-breaking 1:27:27 in Adelaide on 13 February that eclipsed Jane Saville's 2004 mark by 17 seconds. Montag, who finished sixth at the Tokyo Olympics, started her medical degree at the beginning of the month and will only race internationally during her university break at Easter.
She’s joined on the side-lines by fellow Olympians Katie Hayward and Rebecca Henderson. The good news is that both have yet to see their 22nd birthday.
Vallance believes that as far as Olympic cycles go, Australia will be in pole position by 2024 to add more than Montag to the women’s top 10.
Factor in U20 race walker Olivia Sandery from South Australia, who set a 10km PB of 45:24 in January, and Paris could see its second Olympic medal headed Down Under since Jared Tallent’s 50km gold in 2012 and Dane Bird-Smith’s magnificent bronze in Brazil.
It comes as no surprise that Sandery is coached by Tallent. But concerns for Vallance and Australian race walking is a de-centralising of its training programme. Only two Olympic race walkers from 1988 to 2012 were never part of the much-admired set-up at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). Over four decades, Canberra was the epicentre of Australian race walking success.
The country of just 26 million sits ninth on the all-time table of event successes at the World Race Walking Team Championships, with five team medals and 10 individual podium places, including three golds.
But a rethink and other policy reasons means Australia's top race walkers are now scattered the length and breadth of a vast country. Yes, there are training camps three or four times a year, but nothing like the intensity of a group in one place training day in, day out, as Vallance points out.
“We are certainly in a rebuilding phase, and from 2013 onwards our problem has been bringing people into the system after a full-time training programme and scholarship support before that,” he said.
“If you’ve got a structure of moving young athletes into a programme that influences day-to-day training, they come out better the other side.
“But we’ve moved into a one-to-one coaching system that assumed we would produce elite athletes, and clearly Dane Bird-Smith did that in Rio. But we need others.”
Declan Tingay, Kyle Swan and Mitchell Baker at the 2018 World Race Walking Team Championships (© Getty Images)
The coach predicts that Australia will eventually produce ‘great’ 35km race walkers, but reckons Muscat may be the wrong time and the wrong place for debuts.
He explained: “If you stick a young guy in when he has to front up to a 10km (Commonwealth Games) trial in Sydney three weeks later, it just doesn’t fit. And it will be competitive at the 10km trial.”
That said, Carl Gibbons will represent Australia over 35km in Muscat in what will be a significant debut – both in terms of race distance and international championships.
Vallance also believes many race walkers will start to double at 20km and 35km in the future.
“With a nine-day break for the men in Oregon at the World Championships, and seven for women, the only reason someone, like, say, (Spain’s) Maria Perez, can’t do both is because she’s going to defend her European 20km title in August. Her clocking of 2:39:16 (as she did in Lepe, Huelva on 30 January) is just scratching the surface.
“In a normal year, the better race walkers are going to double up. There’s only 61 minutes between the events. Those 50km athletes of the past like Jesus Angel-Garcia (Spain) and Trond Nymark (Norway) just won't be around anymore – and they certainly won’t be competitive.”
But Australia’s men’s 20km team in Muscat will be, Vallance insists.
The team in green and gold includes Declan Tingay (17th in the 20km at the Tokyo Olympics), Kyle Swan (who has already clocked 39:22.0 for 10km on the track in January after finishing 36th at the Tokyo Olympics), Rhydian Cowley (eighth over 50km at the Tokyo Olympics) and new prospect Will Thompson from Victoria who is stepping up to the senior ranks.
“We’re currently stacked with U23 talent, but not so much at U20,” said Vallance. “However, Will would have threatened for a medal at the World U20 Championships last year.”
Apart from Cowley, the others in the 20km are all under the age of 24.
The coach and national event lead for race walking in his country isn’t particularly bothered about the prospects of hot weather in Oman. In fact, he thinks Australia could benefit from the conditions.
“There is a chance we will get a brutally hot day, but right now, it is in the middle of our summer; and as I speak to you it’s a 30-degree day. It’s right slap bang in the middle of our summer.”
Paul Warburton for World Athletics
