‘He can win the Olympics’: Coach says high jumper Yual Reath can go all the way at Paris Games

Ballarat based high jumper Yual Reath could be Australia's surprise packet in Paris, as coach declares he could ‘win at the Olympics’ after he achieved his first Oceania Championship title.

In August last year Yual Reath was juggling a promising high-jump career with completing a landscape gardening apprenticeship in Ballarat.

One night at training his coach Paul Cleary put it on him, if he wanted to be serious about the Paris Olympics then something had to give.

So Reath stopped working, increased his training and now less than two months out from the Games there is a belief the 24-year-old could be Australia’s biggest track and field surprise packet.

Just moments after winning his first Oceania title in Fiji with a clearance of 2.28m, Reath wasn’t shy in outlining where he sees his career going.

“The figure in my head at the moment is 2.40 because it has been a 10-year drought now and I want to be the next man to jump 2.40,” he declares.

The biggest clearance in the past decade was by Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshin who jumped 2.43m back in 2014. The world record of 2.45m by Cuban legend Javier Sotomayor has stood since 1993.

Yual Reath took out the gold medal at the Oceania Athletics Championship in Fiji. Picture: Michael Klein

Cleary, who was an elite junior high-jumper before injury ended his career prematurely, says he’s seen things at training which gives him a belief that Reath is capable of something special in Paris.

“People sort of look at you and say, ‘What is he capable of?’. The things I have seen him do at training, he can jump 2.40. I have seen him at training with everything over 2.40 except his shoes,” Cleary said.

“I have seen what he is actually capable of, he can jump 2.40 and he can win the Olympics.”

The Reath journey started in Sudan, he then moved to Australia when he was seven years old with his parents, brother and two sisters. They had an aunt and uncle already living in Ballarat so the family settled in the regional city’s suburb of Wendouree.

He took up Aussie Rules and also started dabbling in athletics at school, then down at the local club on weekends which was where the man who would change the direction of his life first saw him.

“It was about nine years ago at local athletics in Ballarat,” Cleary recalls. “I just saw this amazing set of springs and then I tried for a few years to get him to come down and train.

“He did half a dozen training sessions and then I wouldn’t see him again for a while. Then one day I have this young kid Lachlan (O’Keefe) who went to world juniors two years ago and Yual came down to training and Lachie was giving him a bit of a touch up.

Ballarat high jump duo Lachlan O’Keefe and Yual Reath. Picture: Supplied

“Then suddenly he started coming down a bit more, so it went from four or five times a year to four or five times a week,

“And then last year I said to him if you want to have a real red-hot crack at the Olympics then it has to be now and he said OK and to his credit he has shut everything down in the rest of his life to have a shot.”

The results have come quickly since that decision.

In April he set a new personal best of 2.30m and then a week later won the national title with a clearance of 2.29m. In May he travelled to Japan where he won the Seiko Golden Grand Prix with another 2.30m leap.

Reath, who is now ranked No.11 in the world, had a taste of the big time in 2022 when he was a last-minute addition to the world championships team in Eugene, Oregon.

“I didn’t know I was going until two weeks prior and I was there for the experience,” he said. “I just wanted to find out who my competition was, who are the ones I have to beat (in Paris).

Reath of Australia won the Seiko Golden Grand Prix this year in Tokyo, Japan. Picture: Kenta Harada/Getty Images

“I have only touched the start (of what I am capable of), as Paul says probably it would only be two years that I have taken training seriously.

“Last year I had ankle injuries and I was still working so the ankle injuries went for three or four months. Once I pulled the pin everything just started recovering and I just kept getting better and better.”

And he knows it won’t just be the competition that will be hotter in Paris but also the weather which will be a stark contrast to August in Ballarat which is renowned as one of the coldest places in Victoria.

“The weather is tough but I think that’s what makes Ballarat athletes tough, we’re training through this tough-as weather,” Reath says. “Once we get a beautiful day, who knows what we can do.”

Originally published as ‘He can win the Olympics’: Coach says high jumper Yual Reath can go all the way at Paris Games