Jess Hull set to do what no other Aussie woman has done before in 1500m final at 2024 Paris Olympic Games
Jess Hull enters the 1500m final for Australia as one of the favourites following her blistering semi-final run. Can she make Olympic history?
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When Jessica Hull was on the train coming up from Australia’s training camp in Montpellier to Paris last week she looked around and smiled at who was sitting in her carriage.
SILVER STUNNER: Jessica Hull wins silver medal in 1500m final for the ages at Paris Olympics
There were two very familiar faces, Nina Kennedy and Matt Denny, who had been by her side on the same journey to this moment of reckoning at the Olympic Games. Ten years ago the trio represented Australia at the world junior championships in Eugene, Oregon.
They all finished top eight – pole vaulter Kennedy and discus thrower Denny fourth and Hull seventh in the 3000m – and a bond was formed forever.
Ahead of her date with destiny in the Olympic 1500m final, Hull is drawing inspiration from the performances of her former junior teammates who have won gold and bronze respectively in Paris.
“I was looking around on the train when we were coming up from Montpellier and it was like Nina, Matt and myself,” Hull said.
“We were in Eugene 10 years ago together and we were all top eight there and now we’re the ones knocking on the door for medals.
“I watch what they’re doing and think if they can do that, I can do that too. We’ve been together the whole way through so it’s pretty cool.”
For the record Australia’s two medallists at that world juniors were decathlete Cedric Dubler who won silver – injury forced him to miss Paris – and a bronze medal by Georgia Wassall in the 800m.
Hull is looking to become Australia’s seventh track and field team medallist in Paris and will start one of the favourites after a stunning second in the 1500m semi-final. No Australian woman has won a medal in the 1500m while in the men’s it has been athletic royalty: Edwin Flack, John Landy and Herb Elliott.
One of the biggest changes which has turned Hull’s career around has been reconnecting with her father, Simon, as coach, when she moved home from the US last year.
She says it has helped put her more in the “driver’s seat” and that it is very much a collaborative set-up.
“I think we balance each other,” Hull says.
“We bounce ideas off each other really well, often I’ll kind of feel like I need something and before I’ve even had the chance to say like he’s come up with that idea.
“It’s very collaborative like when we’re writing the programs, we do it together, he decides to splits and recover but in terms of the specific work that I need, we’ talked through it all and it has just given me a bit more ownership which I think is really important. I can enjoy the purpose behind what I’m doing.” Hull said the best thing for her career was leaving Australia and attending the University of Oregon and then staying on after college to work under coach Pete Julian as part of the Nike Oregon Project. “My dad pushed me to go to college,” she says. “I wasn’t fully set on it but he was like, just try it. So we did and while I was in America training, he was always so supportive of what I needed.
“And when I decided I wanted to move back home it was like, ‘Well, you already know me better than anyone and know the sport in and out’. It was the right time and place and as a grown up now we can be mature about (the father/daughter coach) it.”
Before Saturday night’s final Hull knows she will get a visit from Kennedy and Denny.
“Every time I walk past Matt he gives me a little fist bump and it’s just like a little connection moment,” she says. “It’s like you’re OK, he believes that I’m capable of what he’s capable of. Just those very little things. It’s such a good team and I think we feed off each other really well.”
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Originally published as Jess Hull set to do what no other Aussie woman has done before in 1500m final at 2024 Paris Olympic Games
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