World Athletics Championships: Knee injury forces out Ash Moloney, threatens Birmingham bid
A painful flare-up of the patellar tendinitis has wrecked one of Australia’s leading decathlete’s world championships and now threatens to derail his ultimate mission in England.
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Olympic medallist Ash Moloney’s chances of competing in Birmingham are hanging by a thread after a persistent knee issue forced him to pull out of the world championship decathlon.
Moloney headed into day two of the decathlon in fifth place considered a chance of repeating his podium finish in Tokyo following the withdrawal of Olympic champion Damian Warner on the opening day.
But a painful flare-up of the patellar tendinitis that has plagued his season during the discus, forced Moloney to pull out after seven events in a bid to save his Birmingham campaign.
“I’ve been pushing through pain for quite a while and I don’t know if I’ve used up all my luck,” Moloney said.
“It’s getting to the point now where my body is like, ‘just stop’.
“We do 10 events and we’ve got to train really hard all the time.
“Sometimes the body doesn’t co-operate.
“Sometimes you’re just not lucky.”
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Moloney, who had never before failed to finish a decathlon, will be given every chance to recover before the Commonwealth Games, given his ability to manage the knee condition that also plagued him during the Olympics last year.
“I don’t draw a line in the sand until I’m there,” he said.
“I’ll let it play out and we’ll see what happens.”
Moloney’s issues brought to a close a successful world championship campaign for Australia, which finished sixth on the medal table with two golds and a bronze, all medals won in women’s field events.
Brooke Buschkuehl could not add to the tally in the women’s long jump, finishing fifth with a best leap of 6.87m.
It was the best finish by an Australian woman at a world championships and just 2cm off bronze.
But after smashing her own national record and personal best with a world-leading leap of 7.13m just a fortnight ago, Buschkuehl was left to wonder what might have been after failing to find her best in the decider.
Among the leaders early, following a 6.87m second effort, she followed with fouls on her third, fourth and sixth jumps.
A repeat of her recent effort at Chula Vista would have won gold, with just two jumpers in the final bettering 7m.
Australia’s other performers on the final night of competition in Eugene — hurdlers Michelle Jenneke and Celeste Mucci — failed to make the final of the 100m hurdles, bowing out in the semis.
Jenneke though pushed to second-place on the Australian all-time list behind Olympic champion Sally Pearson after running a personal best 12.66 in her semi-final.
In a scorching race in which Nigerian Tobi Amusan broke the world record, every other athlete in the field ran a season best, personal best or national record.
Mucci crashed out of her semi after hitting the penultimate barrier.
With Liz Clay ruled out of the Commonwealth Games with a broken foot suffered in a fall in the world championship heats, Jenneke — once best known for her pre-race “jiggling” — enters the Birmingham field as Australia’s top-ranked hurdler after battling injury for the past three years.
Despite Moloney’s withdrawal, Cedric Dubler finished eighth with 8246 points to register the best finish and highest score by an Aussie at the world championships, while Dan Golubovic was 14th in his first event in the green and gold.
Another Aussie was erased from the record books though, with Dimitri Markov’s 2001 world championship-winning mark of 6.05m smashed by outstanding Swede Armand Duplantis, who secured gold with a leap of 6.06m before breaking his own world record with 6.21m.
Riley Day and Joseph Deng join Clay on the sidelines after succumbing to pre-existing injuries.
A genuine finals chance in the 100m hurdles in Birmingham, Clay had to be helped from the Hayward Field track in Oregon after clipping the seventh hurdle and falling heavily, with X-rays later confirming a foot fracture, ruling her out of the Games.
Clay, who just missed the Olympic final last year, had been in stellar form and looked set to challenge for a place in the world championship decider before crashing out.
Former Betty Cuthbert Medal winner Day burst on to the scene in the lead-up to the last Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in 2018, where she missed a place in the 200m final by just a hundredth of a second.
Also a member of the sprint relay squad for Birmingham, Day withdrew from the world championships in a bid to rehabilitate a hamstring injury in time to compete at the Commonwealth Games but has been unable to reach full fitness.
Deng has also been forced to pull out with an achilles injury, the former national 800m runner missing out on competing in what would have been a second Commonwealth Games.
After also being forced out of the world championships, Deng, who was in Oregon watching training partner Peter Bol make the 800m final, talked of his frustration on Instagram last week.
“Proud of my team, family and friends for helping me get back to running shape this season and leaving the track with times I could be proud of,” he said.
“That being said, disappointed to not be competing where I know I belong. Going to spend the next period getting my body to where I know it should be.
“Will be back for more.”
Athletics is working with Commonwealth Games Australia on the replacement of the athletes.
Barber joins Freeman in Aussie athletics royalty
Kelsey-Lee Barber has joined Australian athletics royalty, equalling the feat of the great Cathy Freeman in successfully defending a world athletics crown.
The javelin superstar became the first woman in history to win back-to-back world titles in the event after she delivered the second best throw of her career, 66.91m, to claim a second world championships gold medal.
Barber joins Freeman – who won back-to-back 400m gold medals in 1997 and 1999 – Sally Pearson and Jana Pittman as double world champions.
“I set my expectations very high,” an emotional Barber said afterwards. “In the last couple of years I’ve said I want to be remembered in this sport.
“I want to be one of the best and I finally feel like I’m standing up there.”
The 30-year-old has now won a medal at her past three major championships – world gold in 2019, an Olympic bronze medal last year in Tokyo and another world gold in Eugene, Oregon on Saturday.
Barber has earned the reputation as a clutch performer given her penchant for leaving her best until late in competitions but this time it was her third throw which sent shockwaves around Hayward Field.
“I have definitely dreamt of this moment,” she said. “It’s one thing to win it once, but to go back-to-back is totally different.
“And I’ll be honest in saying I wanted to do it, I’ve wanted it for a really long time. It’s part of my dreams within this sport.
“About a month ago I nailed it down. I was chatting to (coach and husband) Mike (Barber) and said ‘I can do this, I can win the world championship’.
“That self-belief just really drove my training and it didn’t falter from there.”
For a long while in the competition it looked like there would be two Australians on the medal dais given Mackenzie Little produced a career best 63.22m with the opening throw of the competition.
Unfortunately she was swamped late in the competition and was shuffled down to fifth with American Kara Winger taking silver (64.05m) and Japan’s Haruka Kitaguchi bronze (63.27m).
“To be able to do that in the first round is great,” Little said. “It definitely puts a target on your back. I felt all the eyes on that mark.”
Barber’s heroics continue Australia’s brilliant world championships with high-jumper Eleanor Patterson winning gold and Nina Kennedy taking bronze in the pole vault.
And there could be more to come with Peter Bol in the 800m final and Olympic bronze medallist Ash Moloney to start his campaign in the decathlon on Sunday.
Australia’s best effort at a world championship was 2009 when they won two gold – Steve Hooker (pole vault) and Dani Samuels (discus) – and two bronze medals.
Barber and her coach/husband Mike relocated to Brisbane from Canberra at the start of the year to find a new spark.
The change of environment and routine has been a masterstroke with Barber better placed coming into Eugene than she was 12 months earlier leading into the Tokyo Olympics.
She had suffered from a bad case of the yips last year and looked to be struggling to get out of qualifying in Tokyo before a clutch throw got her through to the final.
And that’s where Barber tends to shine. She defied the previous poor form to pull out a bronze-medal winning throw late in the competition.
Three years ago at the Doha world championships, it had been even more dramatic with the Australian placed fourth coming into the final round of throws.
She then produced one of the biggest clutch moments in Australian sport, sending the javelin 66.56m to claim her maiden world title.
Barber, who was born in South Africa before her family moved to country Victoria when she was young, started dreaming about being on the world stage when she watched the 2000 Sydney Olympics on TV.
She will now turn her attention to a title which has eluded her at next week’s Birmingham Commonwealth Games given she has run third and second at the past two editions.
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Originally published as World Athletics Championships: Knee injury forces out Ash Moloney, threatens Birmingham bid
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