The agonising quest of Australia’s fastest man to run .02 seconds quicker

It’s the size of a tissue box, or the average male hand span. Or for the modern mind, the length of one-and-a-half iPhones.

The measurement is 20cm, or as elite Australian sprinter Rohan Browning knows it, the frustrating gap between his personal best and the promised land of a sub-10 second run in the 100 metres.

Browning will line up at the Australian national titles this weekend in Adelaide, and as he does every start, the 26-year-old Sydneysider will be aiming to win the 100m race and stop the clock before it hits 10 seconds.

One is easier than the other. Only one Australian has ever officially broken the 10-second mark: Patrick Johnson ran 9.93 in Mito, Japan, in 2003 to lower the Australian national record of Matt Shirvington (10.03 seconds).

Since emerging as a talented junior in 2017, Browning has been agonisingly close to the elusive mark, on an agonising number of occasions.

With his mullet flying in the wind, Browning recorded his personal best of 10.01 seconds in a heat victory at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. It captured the nation but despite hopes he could run under 10 seconds in the next rounds, Browning was run out in the semi-final the next day with a 10.09s.

Australia’s Rohan Browning (left) leads the field in his heat of the men’s 100m in Tokyo.Credit: AP

Since 2019, Browning has run 10.10s or faster on ten occasions – the most in Australian athletics history. Of the 23 fastest times ever run by Aussie sprinters, he boasts 10 of them, including second spot behind Johnson.

It’s worth pointing out Browning has actually run a 100m race in under 10s. He posted a 9.96s at the Illawarra Track Classic in 2021 but with the assistance of an illegal 3.3m-per-second tailwind, meaning it wasn’t officially recorded.

It indicated a legal time wasn’t far away. But while going from 10.01s to 9.99s seems like a minor progression it is a sizeable leap when dealing with the speeds run in elite 100m sprinting, both physically and psychologically. When travelling at 10 metres per second, 0.02s amounts to 20cm.

“It is frustrating, and it also becomes a pyschological issue as well, because you are trying so hard and that goes against sprinting,” Browning’s coach Andrew Murphy said. “You have to stay relaxed”.

Rohan Browning’s win in the 100m heat in Tokyo excited the nation.Credit: Getty

“Rohan is interesting because there have been a number of times when he probably should have run 9.9-something, but he missed one of the 10 segments. We have ten segments in a 100; every 10 metres. And we measure velocity every 10 metres. And you can see where they go wrong, and where they go right.

“There have been numerous occasions where if he had just done his average in one of those 10-metre segments, he would have 9.9. But that’s the problem: you have to score 100 per cent to do well in the 100m. If you get 95 per cent or 97 per cent, you are not going to run a PB.

“We have worked on different things and different areas to break through that zone. It is just putting a whole race together, unfortunately. Sometimes it will be [because] the conditions aren’t conducive to do it, sometimes they’re conducive but he misses the start. It is one of those things. It has been a frustration, no doubt.”

As a purebred competitor, the pressure for Browning comes from knowledge that running under 10 seconds is a non-negotiable these days if you hope to make the Olympic 100m final, let alone win a medal.

Since Los Angeles in 1984, every men’s 100m has been won in under 10 seconds and since 2004, every person to win a medal of any colour has run under 10. Indeed, of the 24 people to run in the final at the last four Olympics, only five scraped in without a sub-10s run in the semi-final.

One of the slowest Olympics was Sydney 2000, accentuating Shirvington’s disappointment. He exited in the semi-finals, but if he’d matched his PB of 10.03s he could have won a bronze medal.

Such is the elite standard of world sprinting these days, the automatic qualification set for the Paris Games is 10-flat. That doesn’t mean Browning is on a knife’s edge, though. As with Tokyo, he is set to qualify via the secondary quota path of ranking points, calculated on a complex formula of performances from the past year.

Running fast in Adelaide will be important for a third national title but on a preparation path squarely aimed at Paris, the realistic expectation of a sub-10s run on Saturday from Browning probably isn’t high.

Rohan Browning at Olympic Park Athletic Centre.Credit: Steven Siewert

“This year we decided to have a leaner domestic season because he felt really flat going into world champs (in 2023),” Murphy said.

“He had run a lot of races in Australia, and then did a lot in Europe. He just felt tired.

“This year we have tried to go a little bit different. He probably isn’t as prepared in Australia, because we have been doing a bit more volume and a bit more training. So he is a little bit flatter when he races than he normally is, but we are looking at the big picture and thinking ‘we need to get him right when it counts’ and that’s Paris.

Australian sprinter Patrick Johnson poses next to a clock showing his national record time in 2003.Credit: Reuters

“It is the first time we have tried this so there is always an element of risk when you do things. But without risk, you don’t get reward either.”

Using a different lens, Browning’s regular runs under 10.1s show he is arguably Australia’s most consistent sprinter ever, and Murphy is convinced Browning can take the next step and become one of the big boys of world sprinting. In Tokyo, Browning was one of just four men to hit a maximum velocity of 12 metres per second.

“But the problem is he didn’t have the full race. It is the whole package, you have to get it all right if you want to be one of the best in the world in the 100m,” Murphy said.

Will one drought-breaking run under the magical 10-second mark for Browning lead to many more? And down into Olympic medal territory?

“I really do believe that is the case – he is a really good competitor, Rohan,” Murphy said.

“He just needs to get the monkey off the back.”

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