Eloise Wellings – her Journey to a fifth Commonwealth Games

29 June 2022

Eloise Wellings – her Journey to a fifth Commonwealth Games

This week Eloise Wellings was named in a record fifth Commonwealth Games team. Over her 24-year international career she overcome many challengers. In this feature by David Tarbotton we follow her inspiring career from the start, including iconic moments like the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and her charity work with her own foundation Love Mercy.

Eloise Wellings enjoyed running from a young age of five with her mum, a good runner, around the local national park in the Sutherland Shire of Sydney. She also played a lot of sports when she was younger. Aged nine, Eloise was inspired watching Sonia O’Sullivan compete at the 1992 Olympics. In later years, Eloise would be connected to Sonia as the wife of her coach Nic Bideau.

“Around 11 years old, I really wanted to focus on running and I got a coach – Rod Arnold – and he coached me for a number of years until I was ready to kind of hit the senior ranks,” said Eloise.

It was a rocky road for Eloise in her early teens.

“I suffered from an eating disorder. It started when I was 13 and it’s rife through female distance running and I struggled with that for a number of years. I was malnourished and not nourishing my body properly with food. And so, missing those key bone building years obviously had a detrimental effect in my running career because I suffered so many stress fractures after that.”

In her mid and late teen years Eloise developed into one of Australia’s best ever junior distance athletes. She ran world leading times for her age. Some of her amazing times were at 15 years 1500m/3000m 4:19.5/9:20.32; 16 years 1500m/3000m 4:15.76/8:56.74.

On target for selection at the Sydney Olympics, while still 17, Eloise suffered a stress fracture. She would suffer another 10 stress fractures during her career, often occurring in the leadup to an Olympics or world championships.

Over the next decade she competed at a few world cross country championships, World University Games and the 2006 and 2010 Commonwealth Games, but it would be another 12 years before she would compete on the track at a global meet – the 2012 London Olympics.

She remembers it being a huge build-up and journey and being on the start line in London was a huge emotional moment. It was draining but accepted a process she feels she had to go through. She was disappointed with how she performed (she competed in the 5000m and 10,000m events).

After that initial global competition in London, her next two appearances, 2015 World Championships and 2016 Olympics Games were outstanding. In all five races in her three events, she set PBs and records for Australian women at these championships. At the 2015 World Championships she placed 10th in the 5000m – the best place in Australian history in this event at the world championships.

In the leadup to the Rio Olympics she was very fit. “I’d never trained so hard in Laguna. I was healthy and in a good place emotionally and mentally,” said Eloise.

She was the first Australian in a final on the track and was excited at the prospect of inspiring her teammates that would follow. The morning of the 10,00m final she woke in peace and with excitement. She knew it was going to be a good day, she even got a hug from Cathy Freeman on the warm-up track.

Eloise recorded a 25 seconds PB, moved to number three in Australian history, and her 10th place was the best ever performance by an Australian woman in the event at the Olympics. “Being able to put it together when it counted was special.”

Rio was above and beyond what she expected and she was grateful about that. As she had hoped, the result kick started an outstanding performance by our Australian distance running women at the Olympics. Four days later she returned to the track to compete in the 5000m heats where she led an Australian assault with all three Aussies qualifying for the Olympic final – a record achievement. In the final she was the first Aussie in ninth place, our best ever place. Her time was 15:01.59, her best time for 10 years.

In 2017 she competed at the London World Championships placing 22nd in the 10,000m heat and 15th in her 5000m heat.

Between the injuries, Eloise did make it to the start line for three successful Commonwealth Games campaigns. In 2006, she was fourth in the 5000m, in 2010 she was fifth in the 5000m and sixth in the 10,000m, and in Glasgow in 2014, she placed fifth in the 5000m. Competing at her fourth consecutive Commonwealth Games, in 2018 on the Gold Coast she was 16th in the 10,000m and 8th in the 5000m.

She now makes a record fifth appearance in Birmingham, 16 years after her first Commonwealth Games appearance.

After giving birth to her second child, Sonny in late 2019, Eloise was back on the trail for Olympic selection. The delayed Games certainly gave her a better shot. With just days before the qualifying period closed, on a cold June night at Bankstown in Sydney she took her last shot at qualification in the 5000m, but alas her time of 15:34 would be short. She felt the performance didn’t indicate where she was at.

It was time for Eloise to make a move in surfaces and make road her priority. “I decided to give road running a real go and train for the marathon specifically. It would be a different stimulus and challenge.”

A couple of months after she missed qualifying for Tokyo, she had planned to make her marathon debut at Sydney’s Blackmores Marathon in September 2021, because it was in her hometown and to introduce herself to the event, but due to COVID it was cancelled.

She made a late decision to run London on October 3. She was confident of running around 2:30 or sub, and she did, clocking a sensational 2:29.42 the fastest ever Australian on debut. She had missed the world championships qualifying time by just 12 seconds, but just nine weeks later, she hit the roads again and rectified that with a time of 2:29.19 to place second in the Melbourne Marathon. But she was not done and four months later, on 13 March 2022, she clocked 2:25.10 in the Nagoya marathon. She was now the fourth fastest in Australian history and the second fastest Aussie amongst the current crop.

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LESS IS MORE

In 2007 after another injury and a visit to Ireland to stay with marathoning great Paula Radcliffe and physio Gerard Hartman, Eloise wrote:

“The best way I can describe what I learnt from these three days in Ireland is that I went there a runner who desperately wanted to have that excellence, but I had a wrong perception of what excellence is, I thought excellence as an athlete was to push and punish your body and if you didn’t you were soft.

What I learnt from Paula from talking with her and observing her routine is that excellence is about aiming for 10 out of 10 health. If you have that, or can get to that, then your body will have no problem doing what you ask it to do. So I left Ireland with one thing in mind, to stop being a runner and start being an athlete. This is probably the best thing that could have happened to me this year... change is good. I need it!”

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GOLD COAST COMMONWEALTH GAMES

Eloise is fondly remembered by Australians for a great moment in Australian sporting folk law for a gesture at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. At the conclusion of the women’s 10,000m Eloise and her teammates Madeline Hills and Celia Sullohern waited for about five minutes, and after all their competitors had left the track, for the last runner, Lineo Chaka from the small African nation of Lesotho, to finish. It was a heart-warming gesture that did not go unnoticed with sports fans around Australia and was recognised in May 2018 as the Laureus Sporting Moment of the Month and in 2018 the Sport Australia Award for Highlighting Integrity and Sportsmanship in Australian sport.

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LOVE MERCY FOUNDATION

In 2008 Eloise was battling a stress fracture and about to miss her third Olympics due to injury. She was in America training on the only AlterG treadmill in the world and met Julius Achon, a Ugandan Olympian and former child soldier, whose story put her own situation into perspective. “I didn’t end up making the Beijing Olympics, but I knew I was there to meet Julius,” recalled Eloise.

It has start of a journey for Eloise and helped her feel that running has found a purpose above her own ambition and goals.

She co-founded Love Mercy with Julius Achon, a foundation to help communities in northern Uganda overcome poverty after decades of civil war.

Julius grew up in war torn Northern Uganda and was kidnapped at the age of 12 by the LRA rebels. He escaped and overcame all odds to become a two-time Olympian and five-time world championship representative.

The Foundation has a powerful aim.

“The goal is to stand beside them and empower them to stand on their own two feet.”

The foundation has raised millions of dollars and empowered women and girls to access education and health care, and generate income. The first project was a fundraiser for orphans Julius cared for. The next was “Cents for Seeds”. People in Julius’ village were dying from famine, so they considered a food program.

As the soil in Uganda is very fertile, they started an agricultural loan program run primarily with women. A $30 donation results in a loan of 30 kilos of seeds, whether it be beans or rice or sesame – they chooses the crop. That 30kg of seeds, they grow and harvest is usually an average harvest of around 150kg of food. And with that food, they can sell it at the marketplace.

Read more and to donate www.lovemercyfoundation.org/

David Tarbotton for Athletics NSW

Image: Eloise Wellings in the Sydney10 (courtesy of David Tarbotton)