Isobel Batt-Doyle breaks silence on Australia’s Olympic marathon selection circus
Isobel Batt-Doyle was the silent victim of the Olympic marathon selection drama. She was one of six women who ran under the Olympic qualifying standard but wasn’t picked for Paris. The South Australian stayed silent about the ordeal, until now.
Sport
Don't miss out on the headlines from Sport. Followed categories will be added to My News.
She was the silent victim of the Olympic marathon selection drama.
Isobel Batt-Doyle was one of six women who had run under the Olympic qualifying standard but wasn’t in the three who were picked for Paris. While veteran Lisa Weightman made her feelings known publicly during an ugly spat with Australian Athletics, the South Australian stayed silent.
A quick change back to the track saw her qualify for the 5000m just more than a week before the selection deadline which meant Batt-Doyle got to experience her second Olympic Games but it wasn’t how she wanted to do it.
Eight months on and Batt-Doyle is still hurting about the selection snub which was made even harder to swallow when Sinead Diver, who was the fastest Australian qualifier, pulled out of the Olympic marathon after just 1km because of a quad injury.
“I’m still struggling with the identity crisis – am I a marathoner or am I a track runner? What am I? People often ask me what do you do and I’m not 100 per cent sure,” Batt-Doyle said.
“To be honest, the whole marathon Olympic selection thing last year, it definitely rocked me. I think it sort of changed my mindset. I started to not see myself as a marathoner because I was like, ‘OK these girls are the marathoners and I guess I have to find my place elsewhere’.
“Let’s say had I been selected for the marathon team, the course of my career would have changed, I would have gone full into the marathon and kept going.”
On Diver, who was criticised for not pulling out earlier to allow for a replacement, Batt-Doyle said: “It was really hard to watch to be honest. I feel for anyone who is suffering from an injury or has to pull out of a race, but of course I watched it and wished that I was able to be in that marathon.”
As the dust settled after the Paris kerfulle, the combatants have gone in very different directions.
Diver, 48, was emotionally scarred after the controversy and her representative career is most likely over although she recently completed a half-marathon, while Genevieve Gregson is expecting her second child in July.
Jess Stenson, who was ranked fifth in the selection period but jumped over Batt-Doyle and Weightman to get into the team, finished 10th in the Tokyo Marathon in March with a career-best time. Weightman, 46, ran a marathon in China in March.
Meanwhile Batt-Doyle, 29, has been on a mission. It started in December last year when she produced a career-best 2hr 22min 59sec for the marathon in Valencia, Spain, to move to No.3 on Australia’s all-time list.
She has since broken the Australian half-marathon record and then last week in Tokyo, Japan, smashed her own 10km national road record.
That event was put on by Asics who have identified the Australian as a rising star, using her as one of the main faces in their promotion of the new Metaspeed running shoe. This includes the super light Metaspeed Ray, which is the lightest shoe on the market weighing an extraordinary 129 grams.
“We are very fortunate to be in this era of having this kind of technology and these Asics shoes, the Metaspeed Sky Tokyo and Metaspeed Edge Tokyo, are really exciting,” Batt-Doyle said.
While she loves Japan, the home of Asics where she has raced 10 times, she is weighing up whether she will return in September for the world championships in Tokyo given the financial inducement being offered to run the Sydney Marathon on August 31 when it debuts as a “major” in the world series.
Batt-Doyle could be looking at a payday of up to $60,000 with $30,000 alone on offer for the first Australian woman across the finish line.
“People who do the Sydney Marathon and have qualified for the world championships may cop some, ‘Oh, you’re taking the money not the singlet’ but the reality is I have bought my first house, running is my job,” she said.
“It’s a really hard decision but I’m trying to keep my options open and I would love to try to qualify on the track still and have that option.”
She will now head to Europe for some 10,000m and 5000m races but knows marathon is where her heart lies as soon as it is mended from the Paris saga.
“I will have my time,” Batt-Dyole said. “I’m so young in this sport that I believe I will have my time.”
More Coverage
Originally published as Isobel Batt-Doyle breaks silence on Australia’s Olympic marathon selection circus
Fev, Guy spark absurd 229-point turnaround
AFL legend Brendan Fevola and music icon Guy Sebastian have done the unthinkable in the wake of an investigation into a footy game.
AIC First XV rugby Rd 2: Laurie’s, Ash, Padua’s hopes alive
The AIC First XV schoolboy rugby premiership race is down to three after Padua College dealt with Iona College in a Davine-Oval epic. More here on how round 2 unfolded.