{"id":153032,"date":"2025-09-18T22:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T22:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/153032\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T22:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T22:34:10","slug":"jess-hull-falls-into-800m-semifinal-alongside-claudia-hollingsworth-and-abbey-caldwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/153032\/","title":{"rendered":"Jess Hull falls into 800m semifinal alongside Claudia Hollingsworth and Abbey Caldwell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia has recorded another first at the World Athletics Championships, with three women progressing to the 800m semifinals for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Claudia Hollingsworth finished third in her heat to qualify automatically.<\/p>\n

Abbey Caldwell missed third in her race by 0.08 of a second, but managed to progress as the second-fastest non-automatic qualifier.<\/p>\n

But the wait was perhaps even more agonising for Jess Hull after she took a hard tumble in the final heat of the night<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Claudia<\/p>\n

Claudia Hollingsworth was the only automatic qualifier of Australia’s three women’s 800m semifinalists. (Getty Images: Christian Petersen)<\/p>\n

On the cross, as the pack comes together from their starting staggers, Hull was last but pushed up to join the group.<\/p>\n

Hull quickly filled the space in between Canada’s Ma\u00ebliss Trapeau and South African runner Prudence Sekgodiso, copping a nudge from Trapeau into Sekgodiso.<\/p>\n

The field settled into stride after that, with Hull, riding high after her 1,500m bronze medal<\/a>, ready to launch for a personal best.<\/p>\n

“I kind of took a second to myself where I was like, ‘I’m right in this’, which I knew I could be,” she said.<\/p>\n

“The first 200m is the hardest part of the race and to put myself right in it, I was like ‘OK here we go’.”<\/p>\n

But, after that tricky first half-lap, disaster struck.<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

In the inside lane, eventual winner Natoya Goule-Toppin suddenly had to hop right, seemingly to avoid clipping the back of German Majtie Kolberg’s feet.<\/p>\n

That appeared to send her bumping into Sekgodiso, with the small nudge sending the South African’s legs into the left ankle of Hull at the worst possible time and the Australian belly-flopped hard onto the track.<\/p>\n

It all happened so fast that even Hull was not 100 per cent sure what had happened immediately after the race.<\/p>\n

“I was running and next second I knew I was on the ground and the whole pack was leaping over me,” she said, adding she felt someone clip her back foot mid-stride.<\/p>\n

“I got up on instinct, but in the 800m you’re not gonna get those women back, they are so fast. The race was gone but I was like ‘well I owe it to myself to finish the race.'”<\/p>\n

And finish she did, well behind the rest of the field except, ironically, Sekgodiso, who dropped off the back in the second lap and was left in tears after she was unable to finish the race due to a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n

Hull, with a small gash on her right leg from her spikes, jogged on to come home in 2:13.42, comfortably the slowest of the 55 finishers across the seven heats.<\/p>\n

Thankfully for her and Australia’s tilt, an appeal was upheld by the referee and she progressed to the semis alongside Hollingsworth and Caldwell.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old from Wollongong said she did not blame anyone for her stack, but was entitled to another chance.<\/p>\n

“It’s racing, but there’s nothing different I could’ve done,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I was taken out from behind so I think personally I haven’t done anything wrong.<\/p>\n

“It’s not the fault of the pack either, that is racing, but I didn’t get a chance to even run myself through.”<\/p>\n

The women’s 800m semifinals are tonight, with Hollingsworth at 9:43pm AEST, Hull at 9:52pm, and Caldwell running from 10:01pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia has recorded another first at the World Athletics Championships, with three women progressing to the 800m semifinals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[99635,102435,64,63,89786,96351,89788,9738,85,81437],"class_list":["post-153032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-800m","tag-abbey-caldwell","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-claudia-hollingsworth","tag-heats","tag-jessica-hull","tag-semifinals","tag-sports","tag-world-athletics-championships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}