Taking place at the Qld Sport and Athletics Centre, the Brisbane Track Classic will be held on April 9th from 2pm and will showcase the best athletes from Australia and around the Pacific. One week after the Australian Athletics Championships, there will be plenty of newly crowned Australian champions showcasing their talents for the crowd, as well as a raft of international stars.

Having her first home competition as a new resident of Brisbane, Kelsey-Lee Barber will line up in the women’s Javelin, an event in which she has dominated in recent years, owning the meet record with a throw of 64.57m. After taking home the 2019 World Athletics Championship title in Doha, Barber continued her work through 2020 and, after some clutch throws, took home the bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games. Her 2021 year ended with a second-place finish at the World Athletics Diamond League Final in Zurich.

After disappointingly being left off the New Zealand Olympic team in 2021, Zoe Hobbs has had the perfect reply in 2022, breaking the NZ 100m record she held equally with Michelle Seymour in January, then lowering it further in Hastings with 11.15s, a performance that met the qualifying standard for both the World Athletics Championship in Oregon as well as the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade. At those Indoor championships, she finished a fantastic 11th, 0.02 from a finals berth. Zoe will line up in the 100m in Brisbane, an event she last contested in 2019 where she took the win.

Another who took out the Men’s 100 in 2019, is former Japanese record holder and first Japanese athlete to run under 10s, Yoshihide Kiryu. Pushed all the way to the line by a breakout performance from Rohan Browning, both athletes recorded a time of 10.08s, with Kiryu being given the win in a new meet record. Fast forward to 2021 and Browning goes one better, running 10.05s to qualify himself for Tokyo and have the meet record all to himself. Kiryu will be looking for vengeance in 2022 against a deep field of 100m sprinters from Australia and New Zealand.

A new face to our shores but an experienced campaigner, the Men’s Long Jump will feature a certified winner in Japan’s Yuki Hashioka. A four-time national champion, his international victories began in Finland where he was crowned the 2018 World U20 champion. The wins kept rolling in 2019, winning the Asian Games and the World University Games. He went on to finish eighth at the 2019 Doha World Athletics Championships but his sixth-place finish at his home Olympics in Tokyo topped off a 2021 that included a personal best leap of 8.36m

Previously known as the QLD Track Classic, the name change comes about thanks to the announcement of Brisbane hosting the 2032 Olympics. We hope to create a legacy for this competition that continues amazing track and field performances till 2032.