Piper Cornelius

Happy birthday to Australia’s Western Australian sprinter Piper Cornelius, a state 100m champion who has just run the fastest times of her life.

2026 is Piper’s best season, and it is not close. She has taken her 100m down to 11.76 and her 200m to 24.40, improving on both of her previous marks in the same year — and doing it at 24, which is exactly when sprinters who have trained properly for a decade start collecting the reward. She is a Western Australian Open 100m champion, in a state that has produced a genuinely outrageous number of Australia’s best sprinters.

What makes her interesting beyond the times is that she understands the machinery. Piper holds a Bachelor of Science in Exercise and Sport Science and a Master of Medical and Health Science by Research, and she runs her own coaching business in Perth. That means she is simultaneously the athlete and the practitioner: she can read her own training load, argue with her own data, and then go and coach somebody else through theirs. Very few sprinters can do both at that level, and the ones who can tend to stay fast for a very long time.

Happy birthday, Piper! Wishing you a season of tailwinds, personal bests and a start line you cannot wait to get to. Good on ya! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇦🇺