Delta Amidzovski

Happy birthday to Australia’s world champion long jumper and sprint hurdler Delta Amidzovski, who three weeks ago made a Commonwealth Games long jump final in her first senior Games.

Delta finished fourth at Scotstoun Stadium in Glasgow on 1 August, in what she counted as her fifth selection in the green and gold. It capped a season that opened with a statement: at the Australian Championships in April she jumped 6.84m, a personal best by twenty-two centimetres and the fifth-longest jump by an Australian woman in history, then came back and took national silver in the final. She also lowered her 100m hurdles best to 13.16 in March. Doing both events at that level is rare, and she has no intention of dropping either — “I still plan to compete in both long jump and the 100m hurdles whenever competition timetables allow for the double.”

Her U20 career finished about as well as one can. At the World U20 Championships in Lima she won the long jump and took bronze in the 100m hurdles, and that gold made her one of only two Australian women ever to win a global long jump title at junior or senior level, alongside Lyn Jacenko. Before that came a Commonwealth Youth Games double gold in Trinbago, and at sixteen she broke an Australian U18 hurdles record that had belonged to Sally Pearson for twenty years.

She started at Albion Park Little Athletics as a three-year-old and was winning NSW state titles by nine. She is still coached by her mother Becky, still races for Athletics Wollongong, and is in her second year of a law degree at the University of Wollongong on an NSW Institute of Sport scholarship.

Happy birthday, Delta! Wishing you a cracker of a year ahead — good health, good luck and plenty more big ones down the runway. Have a ripper of a day! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇦🇺