Aidan Murphy ran 44.44 seconds in the 400m at the Oceania Athletics Championships in Darwin on Tuesday night, recording the second fastest time by an Australian in history and coming within six hundredths of a second of a national record that has stood for 38 years.
The 22-year-old took 0.37 seconds off his previous personal best. The only Australian to have run faster is Darren Clarke, whose national record of 44.38 was set at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and remains one of the longest marks in Australian athletics.
“We’re there,” Murphy said after the race. “If the national record is not broken this year, it will only be a matter of time. I don’t know depending on who it is, but we are all just around the corner and slowly getting closer to that milestone.”
Australian trifecta in Darwin
Thomas Reynolds smashed his personal best to take second place in 44.69 seconds, the fourth fastest time ever recorded by an Australian, while Luke van Ratingen completed the all-Australian podium in 45.04 seconds.
Murphy credited the competition around him for the performance. He said: “I know I am close to the record, but I think I ran a perfect race, especially compared to what I usually do, which is finishing the first 200 metres.” “It was really nice to have people out there. It’s very rare that that happens and they set me up for a perfect race.”
Breakthrough year
Tuesday’s run is the latest milestone in Murphy’s impressive 2026 season. He has run personal bests in the 100m, 200m and 400m this year, and finished second to Gout in the 200m at the Australian Championships in April, a race in which both men broke the previous national record.
Murphy, Reynolds and van Ratingen were also part of the Australian 4x400m team that broke the Australian relay record twice at the World Relay Championships in Botswana earlier this year. Along with Rhys Holder, the group clocked 2:55.20 in the final, the sixth fastest time in 4x400m history from any nation.
Australian running at a historic moment
The performance arrives during an exceptional period for Australian speed racing. On Sunday, Eddie Nketiah ran 9.74 seconds in the 100m at a university meet in America, the fastest time ever recorded by an Australian under any conditions, although it does not count as an official time due to a tailwind of 5.6 meters per second, well above the legal limit of 2m/s.
Between Murphy, Jett Gott, Nketiah and the 4x400m team, Australian running is gaining global attention at a rate not seen in a generation. Clark has survived 44.38 for 38 years. She has rarely seemed more vulnerable than she does now.
