Cam Myers outperforms most of the world’s best milers and breaks the Australian record for mile wins at the Prefontaine Classic. Hafto Strentzos broke the men’s national record by winning the Gold Coast Marathon – the first Australian winner in 20 years. Claudia Hollingsworth got back to near her best with a 1500m win in Italy. Jess Hull likewise in Eugene.
You don’t have to be Larry David to declare the week of 4 July 2026 to be “pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good” for Australian athletics. Even news late in the week of a hamstring tear that will rule Gout out of next month’s Under-20 World Championships and, instead, into rehab for the remainder of 2026, couldn’t dampen the overall mood of optimism.
Let’s start with Myers. His 3:46.06 in winning the Bowerman Mile at “The Pre” more than broke the national record he previously shared with Olli Hoare at 3:47.48 (it also resolved the anomaly in which Myers’ 3:47 in an indoor race was Hoare’s outdoors). Myers left Yard Nogus, Ethan Strand, Tim Cheruiyot, Hobbs Kessler and Cole Hooker behind him, and in the process jumped to ninth on the world’s all-time list.
A week ago, Myers won the non-Diamond League 1500 at the Paris Diamond League meeting (wasn’t the DL concept intended to eliminate such non-sequiturs) in 3:28.00, also an Oceania and Australia record. Behind him in the City of Light were Ezzedine Habez and Jake Whitman.
Myers just turned 20 years old (on June 9). As one member of the athletics chat group pointed out, if he now goes on to win the mile at the Commonwealth Games later this month, he will be several months younger than Herb Elliott (born 25 February 1938) was when he won the mile at the 1958 British Empire Games in Cardiff.
This is true enough, although it should be noted that we live in a completely different world now. When Elliott won in 1958, he was in the middle of a busy year that began with his first sub-four-minute mile, 3:59.9, in January and ended with him being world record holder in both the mile (3:54.5) and 1,500 (3:36.0) as well as Empire champion and the mile and 880 yards (which he also won in Cardiff).
This was also the first year Elliott competed internationally, while Myers had already captured the Under-20 World Championship and the World Championship. Conversely, he is competing in a much wider world than Elliott did (in 1958, the wave of African, especially East African, runners in the middle and long distances had not yet arrived).
Of course, Myers may match, or even surpass, some or all of Herb Elliott’s accomplishments. For now, we can say that Elliott and Myers are a very, very, very good runner.
Roughly at the same time that Cam Myers was running away from his rivals to win the Bowerman Mile, Haftu Strintzos was cruising on his way to winning the Gold Coast Marathon. Myers may still have been in the mixed zone at Hayward Field as Strentzos entered the zone at Broadwater Parklands in Southport.
Strintzos ran a nearly three-minute mile all the way, reaching the finish line in a time of 2:06:20, just two seconds off the national record previously set by Andy Buchanan in Valencia in 2024.
Strentzos was born in Ethiopia, adopted by an Australian aid worker, and moved to Australia in 2011. He started running with Little Athletics and graduated to the Glenhuntly Running Club. He earned a scholarship to Villanova University – where almost every Irish distance champion from Ron Delaney to Sonia O’Sullivan (and beyond) competed – and developed further in the highly competitive American college system.
Strintzos developed in school and open competition alongside Glenhuntly clubmate Ed Marks who finished second in the half marathon on the Gold Coast, taking the Australian title with a time of 60:57. There was never much between them – in 2024 at the World Cross Country Championships in Belgrade, Strintzos finished 23rd and Marks 24th as they both finished 4th in Australia.
The men’s marathon record belongs to the Hunters, as Glenhuntley is often known – after a four-year break from 2022 to 2026 when it was held by Brett Robinson and Buchanan respectively. Robert de Castilla ran 2:08:18 in 1981 and then 2:07:51 in Boston in 1986, the latter running until Robinson’s 2:07:31 in Valencia in 2022. Buchanan ran 2:06:22 in Valencia two years later.
The good news kept coming. Jess Hull put two ordinary races behind her (by her standards) with a 4:18.03 for fifth in the women’s mile in Eugene. She’s not yet back to her best ever, but she ran second most of the way before being overtaken by a couple in the final straight.
Hollingsworth then won the 1,500 at the Legnano meet with a time of 4:00.70, three seconds shy of second place. After defeating Georgia’s Hunter Bell at the Melbourne meet and winning the national titles, Hollingsworth rounded out the field in the Shanghai and Xiamen DLs in May. But she seems to be back in form now after a good month of training in St. Moritz.
Finally, some statistics once again show the current depth in Australian women’s middle distances.
Five years ago, on April 1, 2021, I watched Linden Hall run a time of 3:59.67 at Box Hill Racecourse in Melbourne. This was the first time an Australian woman had broken four minutes in the 1500. Five years later, we have six women who have run faster than 3:59. Hull holds the national record with a time of 3:50.83, followed by Abby Caldwell, Hull, Hollingsworth, Georgia Griffith and Sarah Billings.
At the end of 2021, the Australian 800m record was held by Catriona Bisset with a time of 1:58.09. Seven Australian women broke two minutes.
Now, Billings holds the national record with a time of 1:57.01, and Hull, Hayley Kitching, Hollingsworth, Caldwell and Bissette follow with times under 1:58. Fifteen had broken two minutes.
As a wise man once said: “One-fifty-eight is the new two minutes.”
It definitely is.
