EXCLUSIVE: 'Healed up' Jessica Hull lifts lid on recovery from brutal fall ahead of Diamond League season

Australian running superstar Jessica Hull has fully recovered from the brutal fall she took at the national athletics championships last month and set her sights on making a hot start to the new Diamond League season.

The Olympic silver medallist said she would use the first two Diamond League meets of the season, both of which are taking place in China, to grow more familiar with the country ahead of next year's world championships, to be held in Beijing.

Controversy erupted at the national titles in Sydney on April 10 when Hull was clipped and took a heavy fall in a chaotic sprint finish to the women's 1500-metre final.

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Team Hull appealed immediately and young gun Claudia Hollingsworth was disqualified, but the Hollingsworth camp challenged the disqualification and it was overturned upon further review the following day.

Grazed, bruised and nursing whiplash, Hull lined up in the 5000m final two days later and won the race.

"I feel good now," Hull told Wide World of Sports on the weekend.

"I had a session that I felt about 95 per cent normal. The session was great and I wasn't sort of tightening up or getting really stuck up through the shoulders, so that showed we were on the right path.

"It hasn't stopped us from training. It probably impacted my gym stuff a little bit, but that's all right. It'll save us for September [when the Diamond League final is held], because it gave us the chance to reset and refresh a little bit more than anticipated.

"I had a bit of whiplash through the neck and some stomach grazes, but they are all healed up."

Hull received medical treatment from the New South Wales Institute of Sport and a physiotherapist in Newcastle, where she's based.

Asked if the ordeal shook her up, the 29-year-old said: "I don't think it's rattled me at all, to be honest."

That's despite the fall, the animated scenes the incident caused at the track, and the appeals fight.

"I think it's probably shown me a little bit of a different side to the sport sometimes, where you've got to be mindful of every element that comes into race day," Hull said.

"I think I've learned a lot from it, and I think it's also just made me a little more excited for the Diamond League races where I can decide to run different ways and just leave nothing to chance almost.

"Tactical races are always tricky. I think at the end of the day I've faced a lot of different races in my career so far, but that's not how I envisioned that race going whatsoever.

"But I think at the same time you can learn a lot from it and sort of figure out different ways to approach it going forward, because when you leave it to be that tactical there's a big chance that it's gonna be that messy.

"I mean, I wouldn't race any differently than I did at nationals. I think I was very confident in the way we chose to race it, but when you leave it that slow it can get messy regardless of who's in the race.

"So it'll be nice to just get back to the Diamond Leagues where there's a little less chop."

The Diamond League season will kick off in Shanghai on May 16 and roll into Xiamen on May 23.

Hull will race in the 1500m, her pet distance, at both meets – the event in which she became the first Australian distance runner to win an Olympic medal on the track since 1968 in an historic run at Paris 2024.

Hull will be joined in the 1500m in Shanghai by fellow Australians Hollingsworth, Abbey Caldwell, Sarah Billings and Georgia Griffith – all of whom raced in the drama-filled 1500m at the national titles – as well as former national record holder Linden Hall.

Hull and Hollingsworth embraced on the track after the final and the latter apologised for accidentally clipping Hull, but what went down has set up a mouth-watering rematch in Shanghai.

Hull fired a shot at Hollingsworth's "bigger, wider circle" after bouncing back to win the 5000m, saying the fight her team put up in the appeals process was "quite telling to character".

"I'll use the China Diamond Leagues as a good chance to spend 12 days in China and figure out how to navigate that ahead of next year's world championships in Beijing," Hull said.

"I've raced a couple of times in China, and it's definitely the most foreign and challenging in terms of being in your normal environment and what you're used to.

"The language barrier and the food are the trickiest pieces. When you're there for a couple of days it's easy, but when you've got to be there for an extended time, it's tricky."

Hull's major goal of 2026 is winning gold in the mile at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in early August.

It's likely the champion runner from Albion Park will be up against Kenyan extraordinaire Faith Kipyegon in Glasgow – the winner of the past three Olympic 1500m titles.

Hull is considering contesting both the mile and the 5000m at the Commonwealth Games.

'My jaw was on the ground': Hull on marathon world record

Hull was tuned into the live stream of Sabastian Sawe's world record run in the London Marathon, in which the Kenyan became the first human in history to officially run a marathon in less than two hours.

"My jaw was on the ground. You start to compute, because London's got that iconic finish as they're going around the corner at Buckingham Palace, and there's time on the clock, and I'm thinking, 'Wow, they're gonna smash two hours'," Hull said.

"Seven years on from the 'break two' attempt, we've seen two men do it in the same race. It's just crazy to see where we've gotten to as a sport."

Hull is open to eventually moving from the track to the marathon.

"I am curious about the marathon, but I also would be quite satisfied to stay on the track my whole career," she said.

"I definitely want to do a marathon at some point in life, but maybe not as competitively as I initially thought I'd have to in order to kind of elongate the career.

"I think I would anticipate being on the track for 2032 [at the Brisbane Olympics] and then re-evaluate from there."