Jemima Montag broke the national record and is the fastest Australian woman to walk 20km, with an incredible time of 1:27:27

An 18-year-old national record has been decimated, as Tokyo Olympian Jemima Montag (Brent Vallance) wins the Oceania & Australian 20km Race Walking Championship in Adelaide this morning.

Walking at record pace within the first 5km, Montag finished the walk in 1:27:27 – 13 seconds ahead of Jane Saville’s long standing record from 2004.

The win is the third consecutive national championship for Montag in the event, and together with her swift time, the title secures her automatic selection for the World Athletics Championships in Oregon in July.

“It feels surreal at the moment, that national record is something I have been thinking about for a few years, but we’ve had the pandemic and cancelled races. Often at times it hasn’t been the right weather or right conditions, it wasn’t what I had in mind but I could feel it was on in the first 5km,” Montag said.

“Sometimes you have that fear of success where your coach is yelling out that the record is on today, which is scary because you have the feeling of not wanting to let anyone down.”

“It feels exciting to lock that spot in for Oregon, qualifying early and now we’ve got the next four or five months to put our heads down and train smart. I’ve started an intense medical post-graduate course, so being efficient with times and qualifying is important. It feels good to do the three-peat and to have so many of the emerging senior boys to walk with was really lucky.”

Montag won the event more than four minutes ahead of Tokyo teammate Rebecca Henderson (Simon Baker) (1:31:44) and six minutes before 2016 World Under 20 representative, Clara Smith (Nicole Fagan, 1:33:37) who took charge of her first ever 20km event as part of her resurgence in the sport.

(from Athletics Australia: click here for full article)