Jessica Hull Bounces Back After National Championships Incident
Australian running superstar Jessica Hull has fully recovered from the brutal fall she suffered at the national athletics championships last month. The Olympic silver medallist is now focused on making a strong start to the new Diamond League season.
Hull plans to use the first two Diamond League meets of the season, both held in China, to become more familiar with the country ahead of next year’s world championships in Beijing. This move will allow her to prepare for the challenges of competing in a foreign environment.
Controversy at National Titles
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. Team Hull immediately appealed, and young gun Claudia Hollingsworth was disqualified. However, the disqualification was overturned upon further review the following day.
Despite being 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.”
Recovery and Training
The incident did not stop Hull from training. While it impacted her gym sessions slightly, she believes it will help save her energy for September, when the Diamond League final is held. It gave her team the chance to reset and refresh more than anticipated.
“I had a bit of whiplash through the neck and some stomach grazes, but they are all healed up,” said Hull, who received great medical treatment from the New South Wales Institute of Sport and a physiotherapist in Newcastle, where she’s based.
When 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.” Despite the fall, the animated scenes the incident caused at the track, and the appeals fight, Hull remains unfazed.
Lessons Learned
“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, but Hull believes she has faced many different races in her career. She admits the race at nationals didn’t go as planned, but she sees it as an opportunity to learn and improve.
Diamond League Season Begins
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, as well as former national record holder Linden Hall.
After the final, Hull and Hollingsworth embraced on the track, with the latter apologising for accidentally clipping Hull. The incident has set up a mouth-watering rematch in Shanghai.
Preparing for the Future
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. “It’s definitely the most foreign and challenging in terms of being in your normal environment and what you’re used to.”
Commonwealth Games and Beyond
Hull’s major goal of 2026 is winning gold in the mile at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in early August. She is likely to face Kenyan extraordinaire Faith Kipyegon, the winner of the past three Olympic 1500m titles. Hull is considering contesting both the 1500m and 5000m at the Commonwealth Games.
A New Perspective on Marathon Running
Hull was tuned into the live stream of Sebastian Sawe’s world record run in the London Marathon, in which the Kenyan became the first human in history to 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 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.”
