Australian hurdler Alanah Yukich is hoping a wild globe-trotting bid to qualify for the Paris Games, in which she raced five times in five different countries within 16 days, has her on the cusp of an Olympic debut.
The 26-year-old returned home to Texas this week with an incredible story to tell, having pinged from the United States to The Bahamas, then to Spain, then Switzerland, then Poland in a tick over two weeks, completing one race in each country with two goals in mind. One goal was nailing the Olympic entry standard for the women’s 400m hurdles. The other was stockpiling crucial world ranking points.
The three final races of the trip fell on consecutive days — June 21, June 22 and June 23 — as she shot from country to country acutely aware that track and field’s qualification deadline, June 30, was drawing agonisingly closer.
READ MORE: Burton’s brilliance seals ‘thrilling’ golden point victory
READ MORE: Cancer found after Olympic dream crushed by seizures
READ MORE: Rival questions Jake Paul’s extreme weight jump
“I got back to Texas and my coach was like, ‘How’s your body?’, and I was like, ‘Honestly, my body is fine’,” Yukich tells Wide World of Sports over Zoom.
“It’s my head from the caffeine withdrawals — I’m having mad caffeine withdrawals now.”
Yukich did not hit the entry standard — her best time of the frantic trip, which is now her lifetime best, fell 0.30 of a second short of the 54.85 seconds required — but she’s feeling good about her qualification chances after gobbling up a huge number of world ranking points.
Hustling around on most days off a dreadful shortage of sleep, but fuelled by adrenaline, coffee and energy drinks, she raced in the USA state of Georgia, the capital city of The Bahamas, Madrid, Geneva and the Polish city of Poznan.
“I was so caught up in competition that I kind of forgot that I was in another country, just because my mindset was, ‘Yep, one race done, recover, do what I can to get ready for the next’,” Yukich recalls.
“I think the biggest wake-up call was the languages. I couldn’t figure out what language I was trying to speak.
“I’m really proud of myself looking back on it all.
“It’s a mental [challenge] more than anything.”
Yukich has run her final race of the qualification period. Now all she can do is hope the 400m hurdlers contesting Olympic trials over the final days of the qualification period do not send her tumbling down the world rankings.
One reason she was left in a mad rush late in the qualification period was that earlier in the window she’d been focusing on the 400m flat. She wanted to race for Australia in the 4x400m at the World Athletics Relays in The Bahamas in May. Athletics Australia told her she’d have to log some respectable times in the 400m flat to earn selection for the World Athletics Relays. She banked some impressive times, then raced at the World Athletics Relays, but Australia failed to qualify for the Paris Games in the 4x400m.
Yukich says the toughest turnaround of her 16-day trip was the Madrid-Geneva leg. She raced at 8pm local time in Madrid. By the time she’d arrived at her hotel, it was midnight. By the time she’d drifted off to sleep, it was 3am. She was then up at 5am to catch an early flight. The flight took about two hours, buying her another two hours of sleep. She then raced in Geneva at 1pm. Desperate for a spike of energy before another one-lap dash over the hurdles, she got a Red Bull ordered to the track. It cost A$25.
“That race was a blur, that one didn’t really happen,” Yukich says with a laugh.
“I remember finishing the race and calling my coach, and I was like, ‘What now? Poland, there’s a meet in Poland. Can we get in that?’. She made some calls and within 10 minutes of making a call a lane opened up. I was booking my flight for the next morning and I was out.”
Yukich has Croatian grandparents but grew up on a farm in Gingin, a small town some 60 kilometres north-west of Perth, before moving to America to be a student-athlete at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). She graduated last year and has continued to live and train in Texas, where she’s now coached by Rose Monday, who was Team USA’s head coach for women’s track and field at Tokyo 2020.
Yukich has made extraordinary progress since joining Monday’s stable last year, whittling her 400m hurdles personal best down from 57.00 seconds to 55.15, which she clocked in Madrid on her dash around the globe. She had never cracked the 57-second barrier before the trip, but proceeded to rip times of 55.67, 55.33, 55.15, 55.94 and 55.40.
Yukich is also a model — she says modelling is her “creative outlet” and she wants to inspire more athletes to become the face of a brand — but athletics takes priority.
Early in July, she will find out if her astonishing bid to qualify for the Olympics has her bound for Paris.
“It’s a nervous wait,” Yukich says.
“No one’s safe. The sport is unpredictable.
“I think because I’ve gotten this far the universe is on my side.”