Huge hand Nike and its rivals have played in Aussie athletics golden age – and the other 'jigsaw pieces'

Olympic long jumper David Culbert, pondering the golden age emerging in Australian athletics and the why behind it, tosses up a metaphor.

"It's a giant jigsaw puzzle," he tells Wide World of Sports.

In other words, many different pieces have come together to form the richest era in Australian athletics since the 1950s and, potentially, set us up for record Olympic medal hauls in 2028 and at a home Games in 2032.

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Australian athletics has more or less always had one or two world-beaters since the halcyon days of the 1950s, which in Melbourne in 1956 culminated in what remains our greatest Olympic medal haul in track and field.

What sets this era apart from the others that have come and gone since the 1950s – when a team led by Betty Cuthbert and Shirley Strickland snared 12 medals at the Melbourne Olympics – is depth.

And that depth spans a core of seasoned campaigners – Nina Kennedy, Nicola Olyslagers, Kurtis Marschall, Matt Denny, Jemima Montag and Jessica Hull, to pick out a few – and a galaxy of rising stars: Gout Gout, Lachlan Kennedy, Cameron Myers, Claudia Hollingsworth, Delta Amidzovski and Isaac Beacroft, to name a handful.

It also spans, evidently, a wide range of events, from the sprints to the middle distances, long jump to high jump, discus to pole vault, and walking, too.

Among the bags of medals we have won in athletics in recent years – across Olympics, world championships, world indoor championships, world under-20 championships and Commonwealth Games – two hauls of medals stand out from the rest.

One is the haul of seven medals, including one gold, won in Paris two years ago – our most prolific tally at an Olympics since 1956.

The other is the haul of 15 medals, including three golds, won in Peru at the world under-20 championships in 2024 – by far and away our highest tally in the 40-year history of the event.

And the boom in Australian athletics is not only reflected by the weight of medals, but the ever-increasing numbers of athletes qualifying for global championships, the upsurge in athletes reaching global finals, and the avalanche of national records that have fallen.

"It's really exciting," Melinda Gainsford-Taylor, the gold medallist in the women's 200 metres at the 1995 world indoor championships, tells Wide World of Sports.

"And there's just so many young ones.

"I think the most exciting thing about a sport is when you see so much talent out there and you're also seeing it from a junior level.

"We've got these incredible juniors that are running really quick, so it's not only at a senior level, but you're also seeing the development side of things. It's incredibly exciting."

By "incredible juniors", Gainsford-Taylor, who runs a sprint coaching business on the northern beaches of Sydney called Mel GT Explosive, means precocious talents like 14-year-old West Australian phenom Charlotte Ehioghae.

Ehioghae is the Perth prodigy who at the national junior championships in Brisbane last weekend became the second-fastest female 200m runner in under-18 Australian history, behind the legendary Raelene Boyle.

"The junior talent coming through is insane," Gainsford-Taylor says.

A key man behind the golden age is Andrew Faichney, the general manager of high performance at Australian Athletics (AA).

"It's incredible to think how things have come along. Realistically, the Tokyo Olympics was the big step in that direction, and I think a lot of the success breeds on itself," Faichney tells WWOS.

'They're all here at the same time'

Let's call them winners of the genetic lottery.

The athletes driving the golden age are gifted athletic specimens who've just so happened to arrive in a clump.

"We've got a generation of really talented athletes and they're all here at the same time," says Culbert, who competed at two Olympics and has since become a top athletics commentator.

"That hasn't previously been the case, so that hasn't happened because Little Athletics develops them or Athletics South Australia's got a fantastic development program. That's just the way it is."

The game-changing explosion of shoe deals

A major reason for the resurgence is the financial backing sportswear giants are giving our athletes.

Nic Bideau, who for decades has been one of the leading coaches and agents in Australian athletics, says in past decades only a few athletes had shoe deals at any given time; nowadays, he says, there'd be 70-80 athletes who are contracted, whether with Nike, Adidas, ASICS, Puma, New Balance, or any of the other major sportswear companies.

And Bideau says at least 25 of them are making $100,000 or more each year from their shoe deals. Bideau would know, having brokered 25 of the current deals as the head of Melbourne Track Club.

"A good number of athletes are getting a professional person's wage just to do the sport, whereas that didn't happen 20 years ago," he tells WWOS.

"And there are bonuses for winning races and breaking records and getting medals."

Key is the booming popularity of distance running in Australia. Social run clubs are popping up like pot plants, fun run registrations are sky-rocketing, and Strava – essentially Facebook for runners – is all the rage.

That booming popularity has made Australia's best distance runners infinitely more marketable, with the likes of Nike, Adidas and ASICS duking it out to ensure it's their brand the top athletes are repping.

In past decades, it was only the cream of the crop with shoe deals: global medallists like Cathy Freeman, Robert de Castella, Steve Moneghetti, Craig Mottram and Sally Pearson.

These days, the bar for getting a shoe deal is set much lower, and once an athlete lands a contract, allowing them to be paid to live and breathe their sport of choice, their career invariably takes off.

Our middle and long-distance runners account for the bulk of the shoe deals – the likes of Hull, Hollingsworth, Abbey Caldwell, Georgia Griffith, Myers, Luke Boyes, Peyton Craig, Ky Robinson, Izzi Batt-Doyle, Leanne Pompeani, Patrick Tiernan and Jack Rayner – and it's in distance running, especially the middle distances, that we've had the majority of growth.

"People are doing the sport longer," says Bideau, who's employed by AA as its lead coach of international programs.

"In the past, people would aspire to make the Olympics, qualify for the Olympic Games, and after one Olympics they'd be done.

"But now people are going to three and four Olympics and they're doing the sport for 12 to 15 years at a high level because they can make money out of it, whereas that wasn't the case before.

"People had to get on with their life after one Olympic Games – get a real job and get paid."

The coaching strategy that 'didn't work', and how the landscape has changed

Relay program aside, athletes are coached through a decentralised model. Basically, they can be coached by anyone they want, train with anyone they want, and train wherever they want.

"One thing that I am big on," Culbert prefaces, "is we're no longer of the view that we've got to have, and I'll use it in inverted commas, a 'hot shot' overseas head coach."

In past eras, there were some who entered the fold and "decided they needed to throw their importance around", Culbert says.

"That didn't work.

"Staying out of their way is something that Andrew Faichney and his crew do very well. They're there to assist and support when they need.

"He's not telling Matt Horsnell how to coach Nicola Olyslagers, whereas historically that hasn't always been the case."

At the same time, there's considerable sharing of ideas between coaches.

"There's a lot of collaboration that sits within a lot of the coaching network," Faichney says.

"There's somewhat of a new generation of coaches which are now leading the way, and they've been able to learn from the coaches that we've had previously."

And, crucially, a lot of coaches are getting renumerated.

"If you look back in the early '90s, there would have been a handful of coaches getting paid who were coaching top athletes," Bideau says.

"Now, most of the people who are coaching the top athletes are getting paid to coach them. They're either paid by AA or state institutes of sport or private schools or by athletes, or a combination of those.

"Tennis and swimming coaches in Australia have been charging athletes for 50 years. It's only a new thing in athletics for coaches to charge athletes.

"Most coaches did it voluntarily years ago, and we lost a lot of coaches to other sports – a lot of good running coaches went to Australian rules football and worked as fitness coaches.

"But now there is a way for coaches to stay involved in athletics."

'That's a cultural change'

Bideau is a straight shooter.

"I felt in the past in Australian athletics it was more about each individual who would help someone wanting to get recognition," he says.

"You'd see all these people with Sally Pearson between semi and final trying to get close to her so they could be playing some part in her victory if she won the gold medal.

"You'd be at the warm-up track and half a dozen people would be hovering around Sally so they feel there's some connection to her.

"I don't think people are worried about that anymore. They're not looking for credit for results.

"I don't see people running around after Jess Hull, or running around after Nina Kennedy. They leave it to their coaches."

There are therefore less distractions these days, Bideau says, and a sense among athletes that the strength of Australian athletics is the priority, rather than the egos of support staff.

"That's a cultural change," he says.

Faichney says the athletes have a tight bond, including athletes in different disciplines to one another, and reckons that's played its part in the upswing in results.

"We're an individual sport, and so to have a culture where athletes are watching each other, supporting each other and seeing the successes and then being able to use that as an extra bit of cream to focus where they can go to, it's great," Faichney says.

"They're not just thinking, 'I wanna be like someone from another country'; they're seeing athletes they've been at national championships with winning major medals. And that's tangible.

"We work pretty hard on having a really positive environment and enabling that collaboration and minimising distractions.

"But you can put all of those things together, and without the talent of athlete that we've got at the moment, the great results aren't there. So the great athletes – that's where the success comes from."

'Competition is the most important thing'

Each of those factors – shoe deals, changes to the coaching landscape and cultural changes – result in more athletes performing at a high level; that in turn creates greater competition; and, like so, greater competition comes to be another reason for the golden age.

"I've always said that competition is the most important thing for athletes to perform well," Gainsford-Taylor says.

The former sprint star points to the men's 200m final at this year's national senior championships, where Gout was pushed to his limits by Aidan Murphy. Gout, with Murphy breathing down his neck, clocked 19.67 seconds, and Murphy, trying with all his might to keep up with Gout, ran 19.88. Both of them bettered the national record, the 20.02 set by Gout in Ostrava last year, and the 18-year-old sensation became the fastest teenager in world history.

In prior eras, so shallow was the depth in Australian athletics that if an athlete met the qualifying standard for an Olympics or world championships they were on the team.

Nowadays, more athletes are qualifying than spots are available.

Georgia Griffith and Abbey Caldwell both nailed the qualifier for the women's 1500m at last year's Tokyo world championships, but so did Jessica Hull, Linden Hall and Sarah Billings, and only three could be picked. Griffith and Caldwell missed out.

Bideau says it's not only important to have Aussies going hammer and tongs against each other, but to get top international talent in the mix Down Under.

It's a strategy AA has applied to great effect in recent years, with Georgia Hunter Bell, Jake Wightman, Jacory Patterson, Letsile Tebogo and Fred Kerley (prior to his defection to the Enhanced Games) all making the trip in recent years.

A rising tide

Somewhat of a buzz phrase in this flourishing era in Australian athletics is the line: "A rising tide lifts all boats."

Like greater competition, a rising tide is the result of the shoe deals, coaching changes and cultural changes, and, like so, a rising tide comes to be another reason for the golden age.

With every record Cameron Myers breaks, every global medal Nicola Olyslagers, Nina Kennedy and Jessica Hull win, and every deeply competitive 800m race on home soil, those athletes and others become that little bit more empowered.

"Australian athletes being at the front of races or making finals, and now winning medals, enables that level of belief in a hugely talented group of athletes to say, 'Well, we're not just aiming for a final now; we're aiming to win medals, because that's what we do'," Faichney says.

'The pieces are in the right spots'

How many pieces make up the "giant jigsaw puzzle"? Ten pieces? Twenty pieces? Thirty pieces?

Coaching. Culture. The internet. Technology. Gun athletes. Competition. A rising tide. The shoe deals. Funding in general. The relay program. The US college system. Nutrition. Psychology. The Australian Sports Commission. The ban of Russia. Luck.

The reasons for the golden age are many.

Regarding luck: consider the story behind the emergence of Gout Gout. His parents, Bona and Monica, migrated from South Sudan to Australia via Egypt. During their temporary stay in Egypt, they were weighing up whether to settle in Canada or Australia, and just so happened to pick Australia. Gout could easily have been born in Ottawa, and be running for Canada; instead, he was born in Ipswich, and this precious athletic gift is Australia's.

"It's a giant jigsaw puzzle, high-performance sport, and the pieces are in the right spots at the moment," Culbert says.

"Ride the wave while it's here."