20 years on, Connor Murphy will follow in Dad’s footsteps at the Paris Olympic Games

There are so many instances of children following their parent’s lead in a particular sport and the Murphy family will add to that list at this year’s Olympics, with Connor Murphy to compete in the triple-jump as his Dad did three times.

From jumping for Sydney University to Connor Murphy will jump for Australia in Paris. Picture: Sarah Reed/Getty Images

TWENTY years ago Connor Murphy was a toddler following around his father as he prepared for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

Now the roles are reversed, it’s Dad – three-time Olympian Andrew Murphy – who is following around his son as he prepares to make his major championships debut in the triple jump in Paris.

“Dad’s last Olympics were 2004 and I would have been two,” Connor explains. “Exactly 20 years ago he was preparing for that and I was over in Europe as a little baby, when he was training.

Father, Andrew Murphy, competing at Athens in 2004. Picture: Stu Forster/Getty Images

“Dad says it’s pretty cool that 20 years later it’s the same thing, just down a generation.”

Andrew is the second best triple-jumper in Australian history with a personal best of 17.32m which he jumped in finishing fourth at the 1999 world championships in Seville. His best finish out of his three Olympic Games was 10th at Sydney in 2000.

After retiring he turned to coaching and is best known for guiding the career of Australia’s fastest man Rohan Browning.

He also coaches his son although it took a while before Connor followed in his footsteps with triple jump.

Connor’s father is best known for coaching Australian sprinter Rohan Browning. Picture: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

“Growing up I did heaps of sports. I played soccer, AFL, swimming, every event in athletics and gymnastics when I was a bit younger until I got booted because I was too tall,” Connor said.

“There was never any pressure to go into athletics or the triple jump.”

At 198cm with his athletic background, the oldest of five siblings caught the eye of AFL recruiters playing school footy in Sydney.

“I had a chat with one of the Sydney Swans Academy recruiters when I was 16 or 17 and they wanted me to come along to a couple of training sessions a week,” Connor said.

“But by that stage I was really loving athletics and we were worried about getting injured playing AFL.”

It was after a breakthrough season last year that the Paris Olympics began to come into focus for the 22-year-old who finished 2023 ranked 40th in the world.

He knew he had to get inside the top 32 to qualify for the Olympics and there were plenty of anxious moments in the lead-up to the June 30 world rankings deadline.

“As it is a points based system we were doing a lot of the maths and figuring out what distances we needed,” Connor said. “We estimated that 1200 points were required (to qualify) and ironically it was 1197 points.

“I ended up on 1201 points and ranked 30th so it was really tight in the end.”

Connor produced his career best of 16.82m in February in Melbourne and knows he will have to improve that to make the final in Paris.

Connor Murphy in action during February. Picture: Sarah Reed/Getty Images

All his Dad wants is for him to have a better Olympic debut than he did in Atlanta.

“At Dad’s first Olympics he did terribly, he couldn’t hit the board and jumped a metre less than he had jumped all year so he said, ‘I don’t want that for you, it sucked’,” Connor said.

“He wants me to go out there and do as close to my best, if not better and that should put me in the mix as the data says on average to make an Olympic final in triple jump is around 16.80m to 16.90m to make that top 12.

“I’ve jumped that a few times this year so that’s the goal.”