Paris Olympics 2024: The remarkable story of two best mates striving for gold

One is an only child, the other lived in a house of 13 kids. Now, Torrie Lewis and Caleb Law are both going for gold in Paris. And it all started in a treehouse back in Newcastle.

It was their escape.

Every opportunity they would meet at the secret hiding spot up in the tree where no-one else was allowed.

They’d stay up there from dawn to dusk if they could, only coming down when their respective mothers yelled for dinner or bed.

The tree was in Torrie Lewis’ backyard but it hung over the side of the fence into the next door neighbour’s yard. That was where Calab Law lived.

Law was one of 13 – he has seven full siblings and six half-siblings – and about half of them lived with his mum in that Newcastle house so he craved the alone time of hiding out in the tree house.

Lewis was an only child who had been brought out to Australia from England by her mother when she was aged six so she loved the chaos of what was happening next door.

Best mates Torrie Lewis and Calab Law are both running in the 200 mtrs at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Pic: Michael Klein

“She wanted the noise and I wanted the quiet,” is how Law describes the early days of their friendship.

Lewis adds: “He had so much and I had nothing. I wanted to hang with everyone and he wanted to go away and hang with no-one.

“I always used to bring my dog up there and he didn’t want the dog up there so we used to always argue about whether the dog was allowed or not.”

The tree house was an old boat which had been used as a sandpit before being relocated among the branches and the pair were always doing running repairs with pieces of wood they found to help support it.

“There were heaps of branches around it and lots of lorikeets up there, they were so loud and we used to play with the birds,” Lewis explains. “Mum was forever yelling for us to come down for dinner or sleep and we wouldn’t listen.”

They were inseparable but that changed abruptly when Law and his family suddenly packed up and moved to Queensland, leaving behind Lewis and the tree house.

With no social media back then to keep in touch they lost contact and both put it down to one of those childhood friendships which come and go as you grow up.

Unbeknown to one another, in the ensuing years they both started making inroads as elite junior runners.

Law’s family were all boxers but his mother Julie and Aunty Karla noticed he had some athletic ability and steered him towards the track.

“My mum and aunty were in agreement that I could be a good little runner,” he says. “My aunty used to do track (in the 400m) so took me down for a few sessions and soon became my coach. I was 10.”’

A young Torrie Lewis. Picture: Supplied

Caleb Law wins the 120 metres in 2019. Pic: Supplied

Meanwhile, Lewis was heading towards a gymnastics career – she won several state titles – before at the age of 11 she was diagnosed with coeliac’s disease which forced her to take time off from sport.

She never went back and instead found sprinting more to her liking, quickly moving through the ranks to state finals. By 12 she had her first coach in Gerrard Keating who’d represented Australia at the world championships in Helsinki and Brisbane Commonwealth Games.

Keating saw the raw talent and famously told Lewis she would be running at the Paris Olympics in 2024 when she was 19.

But it was in 2020 when the athletics gods went to work and brought Lewis and Law together again.

They’d both been selected to take part in a national junior relay camp and their eyes met immediately on the plane. Lewis’ instant reaction was to hide while Law tried to engage.

“I was in front of her and I turned around and looked, she was staring at me,” Law says. “I was trying to see if it was her and we made this most awkward eye contact.

“We waited for her when we got off the plane to say ‘Hi’ but she went around the other way to avoid us.

“Then when we got to where we were staying, I was playing ping pong and she came up and was like, ‘Can I play?’

“After that it was like old times again. Since that camp we were like best friends again and we have basically spoken every day since.”

Lewis was in shock and even now can’t believe how the tree house occupants were brought back together.

“You think there are those friends you meet when you are kids, you’re never going to meet again,” she says. “It’s just a childhood thing so it’s weird that we meet again and we end up being both good enough to do this.”

Both athletes train in Brisbane. Pic: Michael Klein

They are now training partners in Brisbane under coach Andrew Iselin after Lewis moved from Newcastle just before Covid struck in 2020.

And they’re also two of the most promising sprinters Australia has had in years.

Law made the 200m semi-finals of the world championships in Eugene at the age of 18 in 2022, This year he has won his first Australian and Oceania titles and played a crucial part in Australia’s 4x100m relay qualifying for Paris.

A proud member of the Wakka Wakka people from near Cherbourg in Queensland, he wants to inspire more indigenous athletes just like Cathy Freeman did at the Sydney Olympics.

“I’ve watched it a thousand times,” he says about Freeman’s 400m victory at the 2000 Games. “I’ve watched her videos, I’ve watched her Olympics 2000 race, I’ve watched her world championships.

“My mum used to play it on the TV, and she still gets goosebumps and so do I.

“I want someone to look up to me like I look up to Cathy or look up to other Indigenous sprinters – that’s really what I want by the end of my career.”

Lewis broke a 10-year-old Australian 100m record in January but will only run the 200m and the relay in Paris. Her world-class credentials were shown in April when she defeated 100m world champion Sha’Carri Richardson in the 200m at the Diamond League meeting in China.

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“Going into that Diamond League I was feeling like, ‘Oh I don’t belong here, I’m going to come last’,” she said. “So being able to win that, has given me a sense of self-belief and confidence in myself.”

The 19-year-old has become one of the pin-up girls of the Australian team, in demand for fashion shoots and advertisers with her face adorned over Chemist Warehouse stores around the country.

“It’s not something I would choose to do but it comes with the sport and it is a good side effect having the media and people want to see you and talk to you,” she said. “I have always said I’d rather be rich than famous.”

Those who are part of the Law and Lewis orbit say Calab brings out the daredevil in Torrie who is normally the sensible one but when they’re together anything can happen.

Just like it did back in the tree house in Newcastle many moons ago.

Originally published as Paris Olympics 2024: The remarkable story of two best mates striving for gold