Jessica Hull breaks Australian 5000m record

15 August 2020

Jessica Hull breaks Australian 5000m record

Competing in the Monaco Diamond league this morning, the first major outdoor meet in the delayed season due to COVID-19, Jessica Hull (BAN) smashed the 18-year-old Australian 5000m record clocking 14:43.80.

Training virtually solo in Wollongong and with limited racing since February, the usually Oregon-based 23-year-old mixed it with the world’s very elite in Europe this morning.

For the first half of the race Hull remained at the tail of the eight-athlete led pack (leader 1000m 2:52 and 2000m 5:46), until she was dropped when there was a four-athlete breakaway group.

“I was so surprised because we got to six laps to go and I felt alright and then we came down with three to go and I was like "oh my goodness" I'm never gonna finish,” Hull said.

Hull then continued in a pack of two in fifth/sixth place with American Shannon Rowbury.

“My teammate was right there and while we haven't been able to train together because she was training in Portland while I was in Australia, we were training in parallel and I took confidence that if Shannon (Rowbury) could do it, then I could do it and vice versa.”

World 1500m and 10,000m champion Sifan Hassan dropped out of the lead and Hull pushed on over the last few laps to claim a magnificent fourth in a 16-second personal best time of 14:43.80, braking Benita Willis national record of 14:47.60, set in 2002.

“This race was hard! I knew it was gonna hurt, but it's a pain I never knew before!”

The time was also the fastest outdoors by an Oceania athlete and would have ranked her 13th on the world list in 2019.

Although the national 800m and 1500m records have been broken in recent years, the events from 3000m to marathon have been untouched since Benita Willis ran the Australian marathon record in 2006.

Hull is next due to race in the Stockholm Diamond League.

David Tarbotton for Athletics NSW