Zoe Hobbs' stride, acceleration and attention to detail promise to make her even quicker over 100m, Suzanne McFadden reports. But how much has changed in the 48 years since NZ's best-placed sprinter ran her Commonwealth Games final?
Oh, how the quest for speed has changed.
In a certain phase of Zoe Hobbs’ incredible rise to become New Zealand’s fastest woman, you might’ve seen her at her home track, the AUT Millennium in Auckland, bursting out of the starting blocks towing a weighted-down sled.
The resistance training helped her build acceleration - obvious in her explosive starts at last month’s world athletics championships in Oregon, and yesterday, in the semi and final of the Commonwealth Games.
When Wendy Brown was our quickest female sprinter back in the 1970s, she would apply the same principles – only with her husband, Ian, as the sled and his trousers belt and some yellow twine as her harness. They’d practise on the fairways of Wellsford’s golf course.
“He was the only person who knew how much resistance to use. For some, I used to pull them over,” Brown laughs.
Of course, the past 50 years has been an eon in the progression of the sport, particularly with the technological leap in shoes and running tracks, and advances in strength and conditioning methods.
But, interestingly, the race times over 100m haven’t improved at the same pace.
Brown, who ran the 100m at two Commonwealth Games, broke the New Zealand record for the 100m in 1974 – her time of 11.44s stood for 11 years. Michelle Seymour, who ran the 100m at the 1990 and 1994 Commonwealth Games, brought the time down to 11.32s.
Hobbs finally bettered Seymour’s time last December, chopping it to 11.27s. Over the next six months, she'd break the national record another four times, progressively whittling it down to 11.08s - set at the world championships in Eugene, Oregon, where she made history as the first Kiwi woman to reach the 100m semifinals.
In finishing sixth in Thursday’s 100m final on Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium track, Hobbs ran 11.18s. Her fastest time was in the heats, where she ran a blistering 11.09s, while her semifinal time was 11.15s, finishing second to Olympic and now Commonwealth Games champion Elaine Thompson-Herah.
After the final (which the Jamaican won in 10.95s), Hobbs revealed she’d had Covid in the week before she raced in Birmingham, which may have had some impact on her performances.
Watching from her home in Leigh north of Auckland, Brown had hoped Hobbs would have gone one better than she did at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch.
Brown finished fifth in the 100m final at those Games in 11.59s, the gold going to Australian sprinting legend, Raelene Boyle, who ran a Games record of 11.27s. “I really hoped Zoe would beat my placing,” Brown says. “I thought she was really in it at 80 metres.
“It can’t have been easy coming straight off the world champs; it’s tough living out of a suitcase for a long period of time. But even in these three races, she was very, very good.”
Kiwi power physiologist, Dr Angus Ross, works with some of our top athletes and has seen massive developments on and off the track.
“There’s high-speed video and wearable technology; the super spikes and faster tracks,” he says.
“But we’re really not seeing athletes run that much faster, even with all that technology. It just shows you still have to have that physical talent to be able to do it. Wendy Brown would probably be running similar times to Zoe if she’d had all the same advantages.”
Brown wonders, too, what she might have done had her career been fast-forwarded half a century.
Both she and Hobbs had similar childhoods in rural Taranaki – Brown grew up in Waitara where her dad was a butcher; Hobbs half an hour away in Stratford, her dad a stock agent. They both joined the local athletics clubs as little kids, following their siblings.
Brown was a primary school teacher, and did her training before and after work at Pukekura Park and on the sandhills at Bell Block. Her coach, Barry Hunt, was the manager of the local National Bank (Brown visited him shortly before he died last month aged 93).
Her strength and conditioning training consisted of lifting weights at Brian Marsden’s gym; he won Commonwealth Games silver and bronze in weightlifting. Brown had a son before she ran at the 1978 Games in Edmonton, and she’d moved north to Wellsford, where she trained around the grass hockey field. “I’d go down to Mt Smart Stadium occasionally,” she says.
“We didn’t have the internet to learn the latest coaching methods. We had none of the analytics athletes have now.” But hers was the era of doping cheats, who at that time went largely undetected. “There was no way some of the times could have been run without drugs,” Brown says. “Raelene Boyle was the only clean athlete who could.”
Although Brown says today’s sprinters are a lot more professional than her generation, Hobbs isn’t a full-time athlete, either. The 24-year-old, who spent the past few years studying for her bachelor of science in human nutrition at Massey University, is now starting a nutrition business for athletes.
Ross still sees Hobbs as a consummate professional in the way she approaches her sprinting career, with real attention to detail. It’s a major part of the reason she’s made considerable improvement in the past year, he says, and will continue to do so.
“She’s done so well to keep progressing through her career. Hats off to Zoe and James Mortimer, who coaches her,” Ross says. “Most sprinters plateau, but at 24, she’s still making gains. And because of her attention to detail, I think she’ll continue to get better for a while yet.”
Hobbs has made massive strides forward after the disappointment of being left out of the New Zealand team at last year's Tokyo Olympics, meeting the qualifying time but not the NZ Olympic Committee's strict top-16 criteria.
She's also been working with a new strength and conditioning coach, Simon Chatterton, at High Performance Sport NZ. And her footwear will be helping too, Ross says.
Like the majority of her opponents on the track, Hobbs is wearing the new generation of ‘super spikes’ – changing the stiffness of the shoe has changed the mechanics of the runner.
“For some reason the female sprinters seem to be getting more out of these super shoes,” Ross says. “It could be a tuning issue where they haven’t make the shoes stiff enough for the men yet. But they definitely help with the energy return and the maintenance of speed.”
Hobbs has always had good stride frequency when she runs. “In the last three years, she cut down from taking 52 strides in 100m to just under 51. She’s maintained her frequency and improved her stride length, which has given her more speed,” Ross says.
“Zoe’s always been a great accelerator, but she probably still needs to get her top speed a little bit higher to be truly competitive at that level. She will do it, she’s already there or thereabouts.”
Hobbs talked about working on maintaining her speed throughout a race directly after the final.
“My starts have been going well – I just need to be able to finish it off,” she told Sky Sport’s Karl Te Nana. “It’s kind of what I went into the semi hoping to do. I tried to compose myself after getting up and just relax and coast home, and I managed to do that.
“This race was just about getting out there and leaving it all out there on the field. I think I did that, so I’m happy.”
Hobbs is leading a renaissance in women’s sprinting in New Zealand, with four athletes competing at the world championships. While Georgia Hulls (200m) and Rosie Elliott (400m) didn’t progress past their heats in Eugene, Portia Bing made history as the first Kiwi woman to reach the semifinals of the 400m hurdles.
Unfortunately for athletics, only Hobbs and Bing met the tougher selection criteria set for these Commonwealth Games.
Ross predicts Hobbs will make another leap ahead in her times over the next year; a sub 11s time would be possible. And a place in the final at the Paris Olympics in 2024?
“That’s possible, definitely. She’s showing she can compete on the big stage; she’s not choking at any level,” she says.
“She’ll keep looking closely at every detail - she’s that kind of kid. I’d love to see her do that.”
