June 10, 2026 could be Australia’s best night at the legendary Bislett Games in Oslo since the great runner Ron Clark set his greatest world record in the 10,000m at the inaugural Games in 1965.
Curtis Marshall wins the pole vault. Kye Robinson broke Craig Mottram’s national record in the 5000 metres. Cam Myers works his way through the field to finish third in the Dream Mile. Peter Paul runs another 1:43 in the 800. Linden Hall and Rose Davies break 8:30 in the 3,000 meters. Lauren Ryan runs a major personal best.
Best Australian night since Clarke? That’s a big statement — and one that relies on fallible memory rather than a deep dive into statistics. But if it’s not the best, Bislett 2026 is up there with any other Australian night out at Oslo’s boutique venue.
I saw Cathy Freeman set back-to-back national record 400 wins at Bislett in 1996 and 1997. Also in 1996, Marge Crowley lowered the 1,500 national record to a distance of four minutes. A few years before Oslo, at the Dream Mile, Simon Doyle became the first Australian to run under 3:50.
Mottram broke Doyle’s record with a time of 3:48.98 in Oslo in 2005. Sixteen years later, Stuart McSween bettered that with a time of 3:48.37 to record Australia’s first, and so far only, win in the Dream Mile. Jay Edwards finished third in this race. The following year, Ole Hoare chased Jacob Ingebrigtsen home in a time of 3:47.48 which remains the national record although Myers equaled it with his third place in the indoor mile at last year’s Melrose Games.
Jess Hall also earned a national record at the 2022 Bislett meet where she finished third behind Faith Kipyegon in the women’s mile. Two national records but no winning performance.
We arrived at the Olympic year in Paris 2024, and Georgia Griffiths ran 8:24.20 to win the 3000m, cutting 0.19 off the mark Hull had set earlier that year at the World Indoor Championships. Hull finished third in this race. It’s all good but not good enough to match Clark’s redefinition of men’s distance running.
Clark’s sublime 27:39.4 for 10,000 meters was recognized by the Bislett organization at the 25th Birthday Meeting in 1991 when he was voted the best performer in the meet’s history. I’m not sure there’s been any better since then either.
Legend has it that Clark convinced marathon runner Jim Hogan to run the race and the two scoured the city looking for a third runner to make it a record-eligible race. Danish runner, Klaus Børsen, who was in Oslo to face Norway, was persuaded to take part – and finish the race.
The legend of Curtis Marshall’s victory in the pole vault this year must be how he convinced his rival and good friend Mundo Duplantis to schedule his wedding around the time of the Stockholm Diamond League meet. Marshall Duplantis, perhaps distracted, inflicted his first defeat in 40 meetings over three years, then beat Emanuel Karalis in difficult conditions in Oslo.
Marshall is an Olympic and World Championships bronze medalist but before Stockholm had never won a DL meeting (Duplantis tends to be in all of them!). He has now won two in a row beating Duplantis, the world record holder who boasts the top sixteen clears of all time, and Karalis, who is equal to sixteenth with 6.17, in doing so. So, if the story about the timing of the wedding is definitely not true, it should be.
Another story running through Oslo is the presence of two of the next big things in world athletics – American middle-distance talent Cooper Lutkenhaus and Australian Gout. Similar age — Lutkenhaus turns 18 in December this year, and Gout turns 19 in the same month — and similar impact. But although there is very good daylight around the clock in Oslo in June, their shows were largely day and night.
Lutkenhaus appeared to be on his way to a landslide victory over Olympic and world champion Emanuel Wagnyone when he entered the straight with a five-metre lead. In the end – a thrilling finish, as his final dive sent him crashing into the track – he held on by just a hundredth of a second, 1:42.08 to 1:42.09. There were extenuating circumstances for Wanyonyi who had just returned to the ring after returning home to Kenya for the birth of his first child, but this performance did nothing to negate Lutkenhaus’s potential.
Speed is not uncommon in middle-distance runners. Jim Ryun, a former American prodigy, had broken world records in the 880-yard, 1,500-yard and mile races at the age of 19. Faith Kipyegon finished fifth in the 1500m world championships as a teenager. Peter Snell won his first Olympic 800 race at the age of 21 (he had never been out of New Zealand before); David Rudisha ran 1:42.01 at 19. This puts Lutkenhaus in a rare group and he could be better than any of them.
However, the gout was nowhere near the athlete who set the astonishing under-20 world record of 19.67 at the Australian Championships. He finished sixth with a time of 20.60 metres, behind Olympic champion Letsale Tebogo with a time of 19.84 metres. And he will be looking for something much better when he races Noah Lyles over 150m at Ostrava on June 16.
Now, Kye Robinson. Having set the national 10,000m record under 27 minutes two months ago, Robinson is now aiming for Craig Mottram’s mark of 12:55.76 which he set in London in 2005. He also earned it, finishing eighth in 12:50.82 after taking the lead late in the race. He couldn’t kick as fast as they did over the final lap but the five-second improvement on one of the oldest national records in the books was worth the reward.
With the exception of a series of improvements made by Mottram in 2004-2005, the National brand has shown great staying power over time. Ron Clark’s world record of 13:16.6 defied near-misses made by Dave Fitzsimmons and Sean Creighton until Lee Troup ran 13:14.82 in Melbourne in 1999.
Mottram then successively lowered the record to 13:12.04 (2002) and then 13:10.47, 13:03.47 and 12:55.76 (all in 2004). This year, July 5 marks the 60th anniversary of the world record set by Ron Clark in Stockholm.
Footnote: What’s it like for December and the great male 800 runners? Peter Snell and David Rudisha, both Olympic 800 champions, share a birth date of December 17. Wilson Kipketer, Rudisha’s predecessor as world record holder and still equal second (with Wanyonyi) on the all-time list, was born on 12 December, at Lutkenhaus on 19 December.
