{"id":837984,"date":"2026-08-01T15:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T15:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/837984\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T15:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T15:07:11","slug":"jemima-montag-leads-10000m-walk-podium-sweep-after-selfish-race-behind-lizzy-mcmillen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/837984\/","title":{"rendered":"Jemima Montag leads 10,000m walk podium sweep after ‘selfish’ race behind Lizzy McMillen"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know what just rips? A little hike.<\/p>\n

And it’s all the better if you’ve got a few buddies with you.<\/p>\n

Jemima Montag had two teammates alongside her in the race walk final in Glasgow, but once they hit the track, they certainly weren’t mates.<\/p>\n

The two-time gold medallist broke clear early in the 25-lap race around Scotstoun Stadium with fellow Australian Lizzy McMillen leading the way.<\/p>\n

It looked like the pair might link up with some drafting techniques to avoid one racer getting buffeted by the Glasgow winds that have caused havoc on the track<\/a> and field<\/a> at these Games.<\/p>\n

Instead, the younger racer in her Commonwealth Games debut sat out front with Montag nipping at her heels for the better part of 23 laps before Montag made her move.<\/p>\n

\"Jemima<\/p>\n

Montag sat behind McMillen for almost the entire race. (Getty Images: Michael Steele)<\/p>\n

“It was pretty windy out there so having to cop the wind for a good 23 laps was a bit tough, certainly not my plan, but I’m proud of my efforts and I went as hard as I possibly could,” McMillen said.<\/p>\n

“What can you do? That’s racing for you.”<\/p>\n

Men’s gold medallist Isaac Beacroft was in a similar spot a day earlier and said silver medallist Stephen Kihu was regularly trying to encourage him to take a turn setting the pace.<\/p>\n

He didn’t have any intention to do so, executing his race perfectly with a late kick to explode past the Kenyan and claim gold.<\/p>\n

McMillen said she was similarly keen to have Montag take some of the load out front, but to no avail.<\/p>\n

Nina Kennedy is often superhuman, but in Glasgow she was a super human<\/a><\/p>\n

Nina Kennedy can measure success in a lot of different ways, and it wasn’t necessarily in metres or centimetres in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

“I did look back a few times thinking ‘Are you gonna kinda help out here?’, but no,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I was the rabbit today, so what are you going to do?”<\/p>\n

Montag said she had the utmost respect for silver medallist McMillen and bronze medallist Bec Henderson, but there were no friends out on the track.<\/p>\n

“Not in a race. In training, absolutely, but in a race you have to be selfish. Unfortunately it’s an individual sport, not a team,” she said.<\/p>\n

“If it was cycling or something with drafting, where you do change the lead around, then absolutely.<\/p>\n

“But as much as I would love to, sometimes you have to forget it’s a teammate that you care about and just remember it’s another competitor and it’s another body that’s in front of you and to ultimately be selfish.”<\/p>\n

Henderson said the plan going in was to complete the 1-2-3, but how that played out was always up in the air as all three executed their own race plans.<\/p>\n

“All three of us have really different strengths in terms of racing and really different tactics in terms of how we like to do the race,” she said.<\/p>\n

“So I think it was best for us to all take our own tactics going into the race and hope that that worked out for us on the day.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You know what just rips? A little hike. And it’s all the better if you’ve got a few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5654,64,63,410400,16742,259535,410398,410399,104634,85,81438],"class_list":["post-837984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-athletics","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bec-henderson","tag-commonwealth-games","tag-glasgow-2026","tag-jemima-montag","tag-lizzy-mcmillen","tag-race-walk","tag-sports","tag-track-and-field"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837984","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=837984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}