Rohan Browning opens up on the highs and lows of his career and his plans to break 10 seconds

Rohan Browning went from being slumped on the side of the road to booking a spot to Tokyo. This is how Australia’s fastest man recovered from a horror ‘flame out’.

Rohan Browning was slumped on the side of the road with head in hands.

Just when he thought things couldn’t get worse, they had, and ironically for Australia’s fastest man, he was going nowhere.

Browning had just got off the plane from the 2019 world championships in Doha which had been a heart-wrenching experience.

He felt like he‘d embarrassed himself, “flamed out” was the term he used to describe running last in the 100m heats.

All he wanted to do was get home to a safe place and try and put the horrors of his first major championship behind him but his 2012 Ford Focus had other ideas.

“I’d almost come dead last in my heat and when you’ve started off the year running 10.08sec in the first race of the season, it’s not how you envisage the season ending,” Browning explains.

“My first reaction was to be depressed about the whole thing and I think that’s kind of natural, you put your heart and soul into the sport and you don’t do it to come 40th in the world and dead last in your heat.

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Rohan Browning books his berth on Olympic team at the Queensland Track Classic.

“I always knew sport is all about triumph and disaster and you need the context that those moments provide.

“So it was a bit poetic that I flew back into Sydney and then when I was driving from the airport home my car broke down.

“One of the brackets in the engine had fallen off and the engine had basically collapsed through and was almost scraping along the ground as I was driving.

“I was jet lagged, I was miserable and feeling sorry for myself, my car had completely just fallen to bits and I was sitting by the side of the road waiting for a tow truck for more than an hour.

“I just sat there by the side of the road and thought, ‘It’s going up from here’.”

Browning knew he had to get away to clear his head so headed up to his uncle’s farm in central west Queensland for a week before joining the Steve Waugh Foundation Captain’s Ride.

He wasn’t riding but was part of the support staff on the 800km ride from Toowoomba to the Bunya Mountains.

“I was helping out behind-the-scenes, carrying bags and providing water,” he says. “There were some great people doing it like Daley Thompson, Anna Meares and obviously Steve Waugh.

“It’s to raise money for kids with rare diseases and you meet their families as some of the parents of these kids are riders.

“It certainly showed that things get a lot tougher than bombing out at the world championships so I pulled myself up pretty quick after that and got back on the horse.”

Browning believes a sub-10 isn’t far away. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch

HOW THINGS CHANGED

Fast-forward 18 months and that horse is in career best shape.

On a warm night in Brisbane last Saturday Browning became the third fastest Australian in history when he clocked 10.05sec, the quickest time ever recorded by a local on Australian soil.

It booked him a spot on the Tokyo Olympic team and confirmed what those in athletics circles had been whispering for several years; the kid was the real deal.

His reflections on the race include losing his gum as he crossed the finish line (he went back looking for it so it wouldn’t hinder other athletes) and failing to run in a straight line which sounds bizarre and warrants explanation.

“The thing is when you’re running really well everything is so automatic, you’re not thinking about it very much it all comes naturally and fluidly,” Browning explains.

“Often the worst part of the race are the ones you remember, there were parts of that race that felt very, very good, that I executed well and there was probably a 10 to 15 metre segment towards the end where I had room for improvement which is always good.

“One of the big takeaways for me was that I couldn‘t run in a straight line, it’s something that I have struggled to do as I run this big ‘S’ shape in my line.

“I’ve broken it down with my biomechanist and we think there might be 0.1 in that alone by running a more efficient line. It’s actually a very simple sport that is hard to over-complicate.”

Browning, 23, is chasing several markers. There is Patrick Johnson’s 9.93 Australian record which he set in Japan back in 2003, there’s the fastest white man in the world title which Frenchman Christophe Lemaitre (9.92) owns and of course there’s breaking the magical 10 second barrier.

Not even Australia’s sprinting icon Matt Shirvington, who was one of the best runners in the world during his prime, could manage that, with 10.03 to finish fourth as a 19-year-old at the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games his greatest achievement.

“That (the Australian record) is something that keeps me up at night, Pat still has a bit of daylight between him and me at the moment,” Browning says.

Rohan Browning knows all about the highs and lows of athletics. Picture: Mark Button

“I think over the scope of a career I can chase that down. It is a very strong Australian record, 9.93, it is a time that if you can go to a major championship and run 9.93 you are definitely into the final and top eight in the world easily.

“And in this day and age, you can probably win a medal as well.”

He says breaking 10 seconds is “only a matter of time” but a lot of things have to go right, in particular conditions, on the day.

“It’s seemingly a large gap, the 0.1 of a second that I’m trying to break down into smaller and smaller chunks.

“When you’re running at 11 metres a second velocity basically, that 0.1 is essentially a metre. If I was to say there was a metre between me and Patrick Johnson crossing the line in our two best ever runs, that’s probably the best way to sum it up for the casual fans.”

According to Olympic long jumper and Channel 7 expert commentator, David Culbert, the way Browning has navigated the tricky progression from star junior to the senior ranks has been impressive.

Five years ago he was very much the bridesmaid as Tasmanian schoolboy Jack Hale burst on to the scene, breaking underage records and stirring up great excitement about Australia unearthing a freakish sprint talent.

Throughout it all Browning was just behind him. Now he’s a few steps ahead although Hale is still in the picture and ran third in Brisbane last week.

“He survived the Hale storm,” Culbert says. “There was this huge rivalry built up prematurely about a couple of kids who were running good times.

“It’s not easy to make that transition from an 18-year-old to a 22-year-old and he has come out the other side.

Rohan Browning at the blocks in Doha in 2019. Picture: Athletics Australia

“And he has the right attitude in that he thinks, ‘Why can’t I win a medal?’ Peter Norman had that attitude, why can’t I?

“Now it’s not going to be easy and he’s not going to get it running 10.05sec and probably won’t get it running 9.95 but he’s got that attitude of why not me which is very good.”

Culbert loves the story from his PB run about the gum and says he gives an insight into the intelligence of the Sydney university student who is studying to become a lawyer.

“What other sprinter in history do you ever know whose gum fell out of his mouth and then they spent more time finding it than doing a victory lap after a PB,” he says.

“He is the most thoughtful fast guy on the planet. There’s not many people who worry more about gum being stuck on someone else’s shoe after they have just run an Olympic qualifier in the 100.

“Most would have their top off doing a dance doing a victory lap and carrying on like a pork chop.”

HOW FAST CAN BROWNING GO?

Rohan Browning was in Year 9 at Sydney‘s Trinity Grammar School when he was told he had potential to do something in athletics.

Up until then he‘d never trained or thought about seriously tapping into his natural ability to move fast but the credentials of the school coach telling him made the teenager take notice.

Andrew Murphy represented Australia at three Olympic Games in the triple-jump, he finished fourth at the 1999 Seville world championships and won a bronze medal at the 2001 world indoor championships.

“I made the school team, I’d never trained before but he managed to engage me and I think his passion for the sport rubbed off on me,” Browning says.

“As this Year 9 kid I just desperately wanted to impress him, this three-time Olympian, this revered coach and over time we’ve developed this really good close relationship.”

Browning started to catch people‘s attention at Trinity Grammar including former Commonwealth 400m champion John Steffensen.

“I remember watching him back then and he was running everything from the 400, 200 to 100 and I loved him back then but not many people were talking about him then,” Steffensen recalls.

“They are now and I think he has all the skills, he has the ability and he has a great coach to really do something.”

Steffensen describes Browning as a “beacon of hope” for an exciting batch of promising young sprinters in Australia.

Rohan Browning crossing the line at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Picture: AAP Images

“He’s the one setting the benchmark, setting the times and giving all of these young kids who want to be sprinters hope today.

“Here’s an Australian kid out there running world-class times for this time of the year and that has to be respected.

“There is no reason why he can’t carry it into Europe and go to the Olympic Games and drop that elusive 9 and potentially put yourself in a final.

“Once you’re in a final you’ve got to compete and put yourself into a medal on the podium but he has all the ability to do that.”

Browning has dipped under the magical 10-second barrier when he clocked 9.96sec with an illegal +3.3 m per second back in January in Newcastle.

It was a good confidence boost and importantly showed him what it felt like to run extremely fast and how his body could react.

His short-term aim is to push the barrier again at the Olympic trials in Sydney in a fortnight where he hopes to put the 100m back in its traditional spot as the blue-riband event.

“I think people really care about the 100 metres, just the intensity of it and the mental side of it really captivates people‘s imagination,” Browning says.

“I think it just interests people particularly if you‘ve got a short attention span and that’s probably how I found myself in the sport to begin with.

“I‘m not a particularly patient person by nature so I’m obviously suited.”

There is another motivation which is driving Browning who is near the end of a law degree.

“The better I run the more I can avoid becoming a lawyer,” he laughs. ”I am just trying to run the best I can to avoid becoming a lawyer.”

And he also has a purchase to make post Tokyo … a replacement for his old Ford Focus.

Originally published as Rohan Browning opens up on the highs and lows of his career and his plans to break 10 seconds