Teen sensation Sasha Zhoya on his Usain Bolt moment and the career-shaping decisions he faces
Australia’s teen sprint sensation faces two career-shaping decisions in the coming months — and they could be a factor in whether his chance meeting with Usain Bolt will be topped as the ‘best moment of his life’.
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Sasha Zhoya cringes when he tells the story about his Usain Bolt moment.
It was at the London Diamond League meet back in 2016 and the schoolboy from Western Australia was in the crowd watching his idol.
“I saw him after the race, he was doing interviews and stuff,” Zhoya explains.
“I was up in the crowd and everyone was screaming down his name and stuff, he wasn’t really paying attention.
“There was a Jamaican family on my right hand side, they were saying words in Jamaican and he kept looking up to them and acknowledging them.
“So I was like I want to do the same as them. I was listening to what they were saying and I yelled something out.
“He looked up and we made eye contact and I froze, I didn’t know what to do.
“That was the best moment of my life, pretending to be Jamaican and Usain Bolt looking at me.”
Fast forward two-and-a-half years and Zhoya is doing Bolt-like things at this week’s national championships.
The 16-year-old has turned Homebush Stadium into his own playground breaking junior world records in the pole vault and 110m hurdles while also dominating the under-20 200m.
And like his idol, Zhoya already has the personality which thrives in the spotlight: “I want to be a showman, just like him.”
He then explains further.
“The training part isn’t my favourite part, it just has to be done.
“I love the show part, going out on the field and putting a little show on, if other people are smiling and enjoying when I’m competing that makes me compete even better.”
He was drawn to the track after going to Little Athletics with his sister, winning his first race.
“The first comp that day was a 60 metre sprint in the under 9s and I won my first race and straight away I said, ‘Yeah, this is what I want to do’.
“I’d had the same emotion for a couple of others sports as well, soccer and basketball, but then when I was 14 I decided to make a full crack at track and field.
“Then at my first nationals I didn’t actually get a junior title and going to a national event and not doing as well as I did in a state event, that was a real wake-up call.
“It was like an extreme buzz call to pull my head in and do everything that I need to do because I didn’t want to be in that position again.
“Ever since then my results have been a lot better.”
He was then headhunted to the pole vault by triple-Olympian Paul Burgess who harassed Zhoya and his mother about taking on the discipline.
“For six months he kept asking ‘Come do pole vault, come do pole vault, come do pole vault’.
“I was like ‘there is no chance I’m doing pole vault because I’m scared of heights’. I said ‘you’ve got no chance’.
“But then I got sick and tired of him asking, my mum got sick and tired of him asking so we did it and after my first pole vault session I thought this is fun.”
Early in the championships Zhoya cleared 5.56m which no 16-year-old in the world had ever jumped as high.
He has a number of big decisions to make in the coming months beginning with which event to focus on.
“I have no favourite at the moment, I just love them all and all three of them are equal because they all give different types of vibes.
“I like having all three vibes at the moment and I’m not going to pick until I really really have to. I’m dragging it out.”
An even bigger decision is which country he represents given he’s also eligible to represent France via his French-born mother who was an elite snow skier. His father is Zimbabwean.
Zhoya has regularly competed in France and will travel there again in the coming months for the country’s national junior championships.
The French are dangling the carrot of the 2024 Olympics which will be in Paris.
“In my heart I want to do Australia but I need to see how things go,” he says. “They’re both offering some amazing things and come to the end of the year I have to make a decision about what I want to do.
“Whether to compete for France or Australia, it’s going to be an extremely hard decision.”
Originally published as Teen sensation Sasha Zhoya on his Usain Bolt moment and the career-shaping decisions he faces