Imogen Russell

Happy birthday to Australia’s Imogen Russell, a 400m hurdler who is also a working dietitian, and who this year lined up at the Stawell Gift.

Imogen’s marks all come off the WA Athletics Stadium track in Perth: 1:01.46 over the 400m hurdles, 56.84 flat, and a 2:17.42 over 800m she added last October. She made the final of the 400m hurdles at the Australian Championships. And in 2026 she raced the **Stawell Gift**, the oldest and richest professional footrace in Australia, in the Lorraine Donnan Women’s Handicap 400m at Central Park, which is a genuinely different kind of athletics: handicap starts, a grass track, a country town, and 145 years of history behind it.

The 400m hurdles is the event nobody volunteers for. Ten barriers over a full lap, a stride pattern that has to survive the moment the legs stop cooperating, and a finish that arrives with the last hurdle still in the way. Athletes come to it from the 400m, from the sprint hurdles, and occasionally from the 800m, and the ones who stay are the ones who like a problem with several moving parts. Imogen races all three of those distances, which tells you which type she is.

Off the track she is a qualified dietitian running her own practice, and she has built a substantial audience around the combination. It is a rare pairing. Most people advising athletes on fuelling have never had to do a session on what they prescribed. She has, that week, at race pace.

Happy birthday, Imogen! Twenty-seven, a national final, a Stawell Gift lane and a practice of your own. Good on ya. 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇦🇺