Commonwealth Games 2022: News and results from the Australian athletics team
Michelle Jenneke ran the second fastest 100m hurdles time by an Australian at the recent world championships - but don’t mention her name alongside Sally Pearson.
Michelle Jenneke doesn’t see it as her second coming.
Everyone knows about the first.
There was that video at the 2012 world juniors of her pre-race dance routine which went viral — it has had over 30 million views on YouTube — which made her an overnight sensation.
Soon she became known as ‘The Jiggler’ and a marketer’s dream.
The Sydney hurdler became a favourite of the glossy magazines and then in 2016 her rise to stardom reached its pinnacle.
Around the streets of Rio for the Olympic Games, there were pictures of Jenneke promoting the event on billboards for soft drink giant Coca Cola. Rarely was her hurdling a topic of conversation but finally that has changed — hence the second coming theory — after the 29-year-old became the second fastest hurdler in Australian history behind Olympic champion Sally Pearson.
Two weeks ago at the world championships in Eugene, Oregon, Jenneke ran a career best 12.66sec in the semi-finals. It was a monumental breakthrough, particularly coming off the back of two years of injury. But for Jenneke it’s just a part of “one hell of a journey” her career has been.
“There have been lots of ups and downs and everything in between,” she says. “It really feels like one journey and everything that has come before has made me the athlete I am today.”
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She will again be jiggling in Birmingham because it’s become a key part of her pre-race routine rather than a publicity stunt as some have suggested.
“I don’t mind it, I still do it before I race, that is just how I prepare for races, how I get into things,” she says. “It doesn’t really fuss me too much, I’m fairly unfazed by all of it.
“I have got no control over what other people are saying so I try not to bother myself too much with that, I focus on what I am doing and I don’t really worry too much about the rest of the stuff.”
She laughs when her name is mentioned alongside Pearson who she lived in the shadow of on the track for most of her career.
“Sally ran 12.28sec so let’s not pretend I am anywhere close to where Sally was,” Jenneke says. “She was phenomenal, she could run that time any day of the week which is incredible. It is awesome to be the second fastest Australian of all time behind her as she is a pretty incredible athlete to be behind.”
Jenneke is taking great pride in her resilience through a foot injury which saw her not go over hurdles for seven months last year.
She only returned to full training in December and wasn’t expecting a career-best performance.
“The two years before this season have been really tough,” she said. “There were times where I literally couldn’t walk, I was crawling around my house because I was in that much pain.”
Despite the breakthrough in Oregon, Jenneke — who finished fourth at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games — isn’t thinking about medals in Birmingham.
“We have had the mentality that we are just trying to run as fast as we can.”
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