Law and Murphy: Oregon experience puts Australian sprinters on track for Cali

For many athletes, reaching the World Athletics Championships is the pinnacle of their career. But for rising Australian sprinters Calab Law and Aidan Murphy, the recent showpiece in Oregon was a stepping stone on their way to another global goal – the World Athletics U20 Championships Cali 22.

The experience of lining up alongside some of the sport’s best at Eugene’s Hayward Field last month has left them hungry for more and now they are preparing to return to the track at the Pascual Guerrero Olympic Stadium in Cali, Colombia, where they will have medals on their minds.

“Coming here (to Oregon), you see all these big names and you expect them to be some type of different human, but when you’re here you realise they are like everyone else, they are just fast!” said Law. “They were idols, and now the way we can look at them is as competition and people we get to race against.”

Both athletes have had brilliant breakthroughs over the past year to make it to this stage, Murphy taking his 200m PB to 20.64 in November before breaking the Oceanian U20 record with 20.41 in February, and his fellow 18-year-old Law improving from 21.11 in 2021 down to 20.50 two weeks ago.

While the World U20 Championships remained the main goal, their build up soon started to evolve when their performances put them on track for Oregon.

“Me and Calab, we were taking this (the World Athletics Championships) as a chance to get a couple of runs in with high quality races and we did exactly that,” said Murphy, who clocked 20.75 to finish sixth in his heat. “It was obviously not my best time by far, but that’s something I can build on for Cali. Calab made the semifinals, so that’s even better.”

Law had the run of his life to advance in Eugene, running that PB of 20.50 to finish third in his heat before clocking 20.72 for seventh in his semifinal.

“I’m feeling really good after that,” said Law, following his heat. “Who doesn’t want a PB in the first round of their first World Championships? It was a big PB. I knew I was in PB shape leading up to this.”

Both had family influences when starting out in the sport, but it’s their own talent that is taking them towards the top.

Murphy is the son of Tania Van Heer-Murphy, who claimed world indoor 4x400m silver in Maebashi in 1999 as well as 4x100m gold and 100m bronze at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. She coached her son as a youngster but then supported him when he turned to other sports including surf lifesaving, BMX, tennis and water polo, before he decided to focus on athletics in 2016. Now the sprinter is guided by Olympian Peter Fitzgerald and has become a double Oceanian champion – winning the 200m and 4x400m in Mackay in June – and Australian champion following his 200m success in Sydney in April.

For Law, his athletics journey first saw him train with his aunt, a former 400m sprinter, and the proud Indigenous athlete now works with coach Andrew Iselin, who has helped him to become an Oceania Championships silver medallist and multiple national U20 medallist as well as a World Championships semifinalist. In the lead up to this season, Law also added some training sessions with Ashley Moloney, the Olympic decathlon bronze medallist, to his programme.

While Law travelled to Japan for some race experience in April and May, the World Athletics Championships in Oregon offered Murphy his first ever race outside of Australia. That was also the case for 17-year-old Claudia Hollingsworth, who raced in the 800m heats at the World Athletics Championships and joins her teammates Murphy and Law in doing the Oregon-Cali double.

The campaign for the sprinters in Cali begins on Wednesday (3), when they race the 200m heats, with the semifinals that same day and the final on Thursday. They are both also on the squad for the 4x100m – a couple of months on from forming part of the team that set an Oceanian U20 record of 39.30 at the Gold Coast Invitational.

“This is pretty much just the warm up for me,” Law said in Oregon. “I wasn’t even thinking about this. At the start of the year I was like, ‘I’m not going to make World Champs, World U20s is it for me.’”

It’s a unique warm up, but one that could prove very worthwhile.

“This competition was a step forward to go to Cali and I think me and Calab really used that,” added Murphy.

“I think we have both got a chance of getting a medal, but we both need to step up.”

Jess Whittington for World Athletics