Article by Scott Gullan, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph.
When Jessica Hull looked up at the big screen with 200m to go in the Olympic 1500m final, she realised there were only four medal chances and she was one of them.
“I’m not going home empty-handed,” she told herself.
Defending Olympic champion and world record holder Faith Kipyegon was in front, then there was Ethiopian Diribe Welteji, Hull and Great Britain’s Georgia Bell.
In the stands her father and coach, Simon, was worried she was too far back to win gold but with 100m to go he was certain the silver medal was hers.
“Then I started losing my mind,” he said.
His daughter was still calm, she had sensed Kipyegon had been playing with her rivals and had something extra but importantly for Hull she was about to again ask herself an important question.
All through this remarkable season she’d had — which included running the fifth fastest 1500m in history — the answer had been the right one. Was that going to be the case with the world watching in the biggest race of her life?
“When I got into the straight I had another glimpse (at the screen) and I was like, ‘Oh there are still four of us’ so I was like just run through the line.
“Even just watching Faith pull away from us, just knowing the closer I was to her the closer I was to a medal, it was the best feeling.
“I was just trusting everything I’d done, it is easy to doubt yourself, especially on this stage and I had to remind myself that every time I have asked for my gears to be there this year they have been.
“I had to just trust that was going to happen today, I knew that I was going to get a medal, I just didn’t know what colour.”
It was a silver in the fastest 1500m final in Olympic history. Kipyegon won her third consecutive title in an Olympic record 3min51.29sec with Hull producing the second-fastest race of her life (3:52.56sec) while Bell ran a national record (3:52,61sec).
“I honestly didn’t realise how close Georgia was until I crossed the line and I kind of put my arms out and she ran straight into them,” Hull said. “Then I was like she nearly took that from me’.”
As she then lay on the Stade de France track, the 27-year-old was overcome by a sense of relief.
“I have wanted it for so long,” Hull said. “Just processing it, she (Kipyegon) is the triple Olympic champion here and to be following her home in that kind of situation is incredible and is everything I have dreamt of.
“I have wanted this moment for so long, to just finally realise it was like ‘My goodness’ I’ve done it.”
Simon Hull saw something change in his daughter last month after she dropped five seconds off her own Australian record in pushing Kipyegon to break the world record at the Paris Diamond League.
“It feels unbelievable it was a perfectly executed plan,” he said. “She’s been in shape. We hit every workout for the last six months and I knew she was ready to go, she was very calm which for me was great.
“We went over there this afternoon and she said, ‘I think I’m going to medal, I’ve just got a feeling and I said, ‘Well, shoot for gold’ and she said ‘I’ll be shooting, don’t you worry.
“She’s been building to this for 10 years. She does every one percenter, she misses nothing in training, she’s strong. She had that great race in Paris and all of a sudden you go from, ‘’I’m an outside chance for a medal to I’m medalling’, so your mindset shifts and I saw this massive shift in her.
“Everyone who makes the Olympics believes they can medal or they dream of medalling. She started believing it wasn’t a dream. It was like I can actually get out there, I’m going to shoot for gold. they’re not untouchable.
“The Africans are unbelievable athletes and due respect to them, at one stage they were so far in front of the rest of the world it wasn’t funny.
“But I hope she showed the other girls to get out there and get after them. You can compete, to the girls in Australia, we can compete.”
Hull’s mum sent her a message before the race with a picture of her, aged around 12, on the cover of the Aussie Athletics magazine.
The message read: “Remember this little girl tonight when you are out there making your dream a reality.”
After spending eight years living in the US, which included running for the University of Oregon, Hull decided to return home last year and hook-up again with her father who had been her junior coach.
She says that bond between them is a big reason why she made the Olympic dais.
He wanted her to get faster, so the 5000m event was dropped with a focus on sprints in training to build her speed. She had continually been around the mark – 11th in the Tokyo final and seventh at last year’s world championships in Budapest – but something had to change.
“There is a different level of trust and a different bond (with Dad),” Hull said. “He has let me drive it too and always encouraged me to dream really big, and told me ‘Why not you?’.”
The girl from Wollongong is the first Australian woman to medal in the 1500m in Olympic history and joins legends Sally Pearson and Cathy Freeman as Australia’s only track medallists this century.
“I just hope there are a lot of young girls that woke up today and have seen that, it’s like they can do this too now,” she said. “You have to see it to be it and I think there are a lot of people who have seen it and think we can get among that in the next few decades.
“I am just excited to be a part of history and I think I might have opened the floodgates for the junior girls back home that are running the 1500.”
Hull had quarantined herself away over the past week – she got Covid during the 2022 world championships – and only saw her mother and brother for the first time in Paris on her victory lap.
It was a special moment among many for the Hull family and as father and daughter embraced for the first underneath the Stade de France, he couldn’t help but still have his coaches’ hat on.
“Maybe if she is three metres closer on the bend then she’s chasing her (Kipyegon) down,” he said with a smile.
