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“Rose! Rose! Imagine Alan! He’ll be so excited.”
Alan is the groundskeeper at the Newcastle athletics track where Rose Davies and Jess Hull train.
Davies was in the media zone, a second Commonwealth gold medal won in the 5000m, a flag on her shoulders, finishing a video interview. She turned excitedly to Hull, her Australian teammate and Olympic silver medallist.
“He’ll have been watching. He’ll be so happy,” Davies beamed.
For years Hull has been the mentor, pushing Davies along. In the home straight of the 5000m in Glasgow, Hull might have preferred she didn’t do quite so much pushing.
Hull knew with 150 metres to go that Australia were going to win silver and gold.
Davies didn’t think that. She didn’t let herself think anything; she had Jess Hull on her shoulder and had the sick realisation she had to try to beat an Olympic silver medallist in a sprint to the line.
Davies doesn’t yet grasp that Hull was thinking the same thing, that she would have to go stride for stride with Rose Davies, the woman who only nights ago won the 10km race and was able to elevate herself into history.
On Monday night Davies surprised herself when she won gold in the 10,000m. On Thursday night after holding out Hull in that sprint down the home straight she added the 5000m gold.
No woman in the history of the Commonwealth Games had ever won the double. Davies now has.
Don’t lightly move on from that. The middle distances races at the Commonwealth Games have fielded greats of the sport.
“Oh my God! Oh my gosh! I can’t believe it. I’m so so happy. To win in the 10k was a dream, and then I knew I had to refocus. And yeah, to win in the 5k is just crazy, yeah?” she said.
“I can’t believe it. It means the world to me. I mean, as a little girl you watch the Commonwealth Games and you see your idols on the screen and you want that to be you and I just can’t believe that I’ve achieved that.”
With four laps to go Scotland’s Megan Keith broke for the lead. The crowd in the stands went with her but not the crowd behind her on the track. The field gave her short a leash. The crowd gave her another leg.
It is a small track at Scotstoun, a boutique stadium, but the stands shook as the Scot counted down the laps and held her lead. With three laps to go Davies made her move and tightened the gap on Keith. Hull tied her caravan to Davies and stayed with her.
With two laps to go Keith still had the lead but Davies was on her shoulder. Hull was sweating on Davies. Uganda’s Esther Chebet, England’s Hannah Nuttall and Kenya’s Carolin Nyaga were all clinging on but you sensed they were flagging.
With one lap to go Keith had the lead. Just. Davies and Hull looked stronger and poised to kick up a gear. The other three faded.
At the 150-metre mark Keith flagged. Davies pushed around her and Hull followed.
“With 150 to go, I realised we were going to go 1-2 and that was pretty incredible,” said Hull who ran the mile heat on Wednesday and will run the final of that event on Saturday night.
“Then I was already sort of thinking, ‘I wish this was only a mile’. Kicking at the end of the five is a different beast [to the mile] and I think my tactics were quite raw out there. I think a few times I found myself not really quite knowing what to do, which doesn’t happen in the 15 [1500m], but in the five it was a little bit of foreign territory.
“I think I might have played some cards very early in that first two to three [km] when there was just a few shifts, and I realised at the top of that straight I was like, oh, I might be one card short for what Rose is going to throw at me.”
By the top of that straight Keith had been cut, Australia were going to double. Hull had the reputation, the experience and the medals from world championships and Olympics, but Davies had the legs. She was relentless in that final straight. She crossed in 14:44.53, 0.48 seconds ahead of Hull.
The pair embraced and cried and smiled and hugged. All at once. They jogged another lap in celebration.
“Jess is obviously a massive inspiration to me. She’s done so much, and she’s such a good role model for the sport. To be in a sprint finish with her is crazy. We both train at the same track in Newcastle, and I see her like week to week. To have two Newcastle girls gunning for the line in a Commonwealth Games, and to come first and second is insane and so good for Newcastle.”
Hull felt banking a silver medal would help her try to win the mile on Saturday.
“It almost just takes the pressure off for the mile now. I think a lot of why I wanted to do the 5000 was I didn’t have a Commonwealth medal, so even if you look back at world indoors, I ran two events because I almost wanted to go into the 1500 final having already won a medal. Because then it’s just like I can breathe a bit,“ she said.
(Hull’s pet event is the 1500 but the distance is adjusted to 1600m (a mile) at these Games.)
“I don’t know too many people that would have said Australia 1-2 in the 5000 12 months ago, two years ago. So for us to do it is very special. There’s so much pride there for being two Aussies, going 1-2, but also just for what Rose and just what she has done.”
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