Specify date: May 16, 2026. Note venue and occasion: Shanghai Women’s Diamond League 1500m race.
Five Australian women in this field (a remarkable circumstance in itself). Abby Caldwell comes home in third place. Behind her are Jess Hall, sixth, Claudia Hollingsworth, Sarah Billings and Linden Hall, eighth, ninth and 10th, respectively.
This in turn comes just five weeks after the thrilling final at the Australian Championships which saw Hollingsworth take gold ahead of Billings and Caldwell. Hull was in front 30 meters from the line before falling into a tangle of legs as she and Hollingsworth jockeyed for position. Caldwell, an innocent bystander, was heavily checked allowing Billings to reach second place.
Hollingsworth was initially disqualified, and the decision was overturned on appeal. Final score Hollingsworth, Billings, Caldwell. Hull ran across the line in last place.
There was a list of reasons as long as your arm explaining why Jess Hall lost the national title. Likewise, there are a host of mitigating circumstances to her performance in Shanghai, led by the very important fact that she is the only Australian to ever win the race. Hull raced hard with pacemakers through two 62-second laps. I took the lead at 1200 in the under 3:09 mark. She took the plunge in the 200 meters final with five athletes overtaking her.
However, the legendary visitor from another planet with only the results book as a guide might wonder whether the Australian women’s 1500m has entered a period of transition. Regardless of the circumstances, the Australian record holder and Olympic silver medalist and world bronze medalist have now been beaten by two different opponents in two different races.
To be perfectly clear, this means not taking anything away from Jess Hall. As mentioned, she was the only one of the five Australians to put themselves in a position to win in Shanghai. Even Caldwell’s final surge that took her from sixth in the 300 to third left her more than half a second behind the winner, Berke Hailum of Ethiopia.
Hull also have a chance to reverse the scoreline – particularly their finishing position with Australia – when they line up on almost the same field for the second leg of their Chinese Diamond League encounter in Xiamen (Saturday, May 23).
But having already seen a remarkable shift in the Australian men’s 1500m from Stewie McSween and Olly Hoare to Cameron Myers and – less decisively – Adam Spencer, have the past two months seen a subtle shift from a women’s era dominated by Hall and Linden Hall to a future in which Hollingsworth and Caldwell are the standard-bearers?
Perhaps it’s too early to tell, but what we can see is that Caldwell – who claimed bronze in the 2022 Commonwealth Games 1500 – has now pretty much booked a place for the mile in Glasgow this year. This is great because by now, despite a Commonwealth medal, Caldwell’s ambitions in 1500 had been largely frustrated by the presence of not only Hull and Hall, but also Georgia Griffiths.
Naturally, Caldwell has made a decent fist of the 800m in the meantime – reaching the semi-finals at the 2023 and 2025 World Championships and the 2024 Olympics. In her only outing in the 1,500m, Caldwell reached the semi-finals in Budapest in 2023, indicating the potential she and her team believe she has in the longer event.
Nothing has been decided yet – neither in the women’s nor the men’s middle distances at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. You can be sure that Jess Hull’s feet — assuming they do most of the talking — will have a lot to say about the 1,500 and 800 races yet, for one thing. Hull, Caldwell and Hollingsworth may set their sights on doubling the middle distance. Things may or may not become clearer with a few more races, otherwise it will be up to the selectors who runs what and whether anyone will be able to run more than one event.
Shanghai and Xiamen show we have the depth to field strong representatives in the women’s 800 and mile without anyone attempting the double in Glasgow.
With Cam Myers’ thrilling sub-3:30 win in the national title ahead of Olly Hoare and Adam Spencer, these three will be looking to take the lead in the men’s mile (Myers has already been selected, along with Hollingsworth in the women’s mile). Jude Thomas and Jack Anstey are sure to be further considered and other contenders may emerge.
Likewise, it would be foolish to exclude Linden Hall and Georgia Griffiths from consideration for the women’s mile, even though Hall is also tipped for selection with Rose Davies in the 5000m. Both women reached the final of the world championships in Tokyo last year.
As Mark English showed in his victory in the men’s 800 meters in Shanghai, in middle-distance races you never know the winner until the first runner crosses the finish line. The veteran Englishman was never in front until the final move.
