After leaving rugby behind to burst on to the sprinting scene, Australia’s Lachie Kennedy talks to Cathal Dennehy about being a quick learner, jousting with Gout Gout and going for Commonwealth gold.

There’s just something special about a major 100m final. No event in athletics has more eyeballs on it. No discipline has as many big, bold personalities. No pre-race moments are loaded with more tension than those fraught seconds after the athletes are called to their marks, a packed stadium descending into deathly silence.

“It’s thrilling,” says Lachlan Kennedy. “Nothing can even replace it. It’s this indescribable feeling: adrenaline, excitement, maybe a little bit of nerves. But I don’t think I get nervous much. I just get so pumped. I love the big moments, I welcome the pressure.”

The 22-year-old will experience just that at the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, where he’ll be one of Australia’s leading hopes for a medal. Though his sights are set beyond only that.

“I want to win,” he says. “I want to win every race I’m in, to be fair. But I really want to win Comm Games and I think I can. I know there are some cracking runners there and I’ll have to run my best if I want to have a chance. But I welcome that. That’s how it should be.”

Kennedy believes this will be a “really, really good” edition of the Games. “It’s going to be fast, intense,” he says. “Glasgow is a lucky place to have it. It’s a good city, it’s going to be a good vibe, and I’m very excited to run.”

His journey to that start line, and his place among the world’s top sprinters, began on a rugby pitch. Kennedy was born in south London, his family moving to Australia when he was a toddler in 2006. He took up rugby there at the age of five.

“I love team sports: the camaraderie, the brotherhood,” he says. “I went to a private boys’ school and playing there with my mates, they’re some of my best memories from sports. I wasn’t great at most sports, but I was faster than pretty much every kid on the pitch.”

No surprise, then, that he played on the wing. “I was good with the ball in hand, but as soon as the ball left my hand I was a bit of a liability on defence,” he laughs. “I didn’t like tackling. I didn’t like getting tackled.”

Kennedy grew up in Brisbane and sprinted with his school between the ages of 11 and 13 before stepping away from athletics, adding that he “thought it was a bit corny”. In his penultimate year of high school, his rugby coach convinced him to try out for the school relay team, and Kennedy was also entered for the individual 100m after clocking the fastest time in a trial. Juggling athletics and rugby during his final year, he lowered his 100m best to 10.5 and, after graduating, chose to focus on sprinting.

The strongest part of his race is the first half, and Kennedy knows his rugby background is key to that. “Acceleration is probably more important than top speed for most sports,” he says. “The quick burst and acceleration, I credit a lot of that to [rugby].”

He’s had the same coaching set-up since 2023, his career guided by Andrew Iselin, with typically on the track three or four days a week and in the gym three times.

In 2024 he became an Olympian in Paris, helping Australia to an Oceanian record in the 4x100m. In 2025, he hit a new level, equalling the Australian 60m record with a blazing outdoor clocking of 6.43 (1.6). At the World Indoors in Nanjing, China, he claimed his first global medal, running 6.50 to take 60m silver.

“2025 was a year where, every time I ran, a new opportunity would present itself,” he says. “I was on a heater, on fire. All of a sudden, I was running against some of the best runners in the world, running at Diamond Leagues, running against world medallists, world champions.”

He committed to several races early in the outdoor season. Looking back, he reckons it was too many. After cracking 10 seconds for the first time at the Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi during May of last year, running 9.98, a niggle he’d carried in his back worsened.

“I had that in February but I kept pushing through it – I just can’t say no. I thought everyone had a sore back, no one ever runs at 100 per cent. I knew after World Relays, something wasn’t right but [the pain] would go away. It’d warm up at training. But running proper races, real fast, it got real sore.”

In the days after that Nairobi race, he was unable to walk and underwent an MRI scan, which showed a stress fracture in the L4/L5 disc in his back. “It was just too much,” he says of his schedule. “Something had to go and it ended up being my back.”

Kennedy returned to racing at the Prefontaine Classic last July, clocking 10.07, then called his season to a halt, missing the Tokyo World Championships.

“It was definitely disappointing not being able to run, I think I’d have done really well there,” he says. “We rehabbed it well, made the smart decision to pull out. I probably could have run but I’d have been half-baked. It wouldn’t have been my best. We fully rehabbed it and I’m pretty sure it’s fully recovered now. I’m back better than ever.”

With the lessons assimilated from 2025, he’s taken a new approach this year.

“My gym is completely different to what it was, not much axial loading – weight compressing the spine,” he says. “I’ve done way fewer races, too. We skipped the indoor season. I wanted to hit the outdoors hard. Next year we’ll probably do it differently again and try and just get better every year.”

At the Australian nationals in April, Kennedy powered to gold in the 100m in 9.96 (0.5m/s), while the 200m title went to Gout Gout – the 18-year-old smashing the Oceanian record with 19.67 (1.7m/s). The pair have twice raced over 100m, with Kennedy winning both, and five times over 200m, with Kennedy ahead 3-2 there.

“He’s a great athlete, with all the potential in the world,” Kennedy says of Gout, who’s attracting global, mainstream attention after clips of him outclassing his teenage peers in Australia went viral.

“He has the mindset and the team around him to live up to that potential,” adds Kennedy. “He’s a great competitor. I love running against him. I had his number these last couple of races, it’s always good to get the win over him, but at the end of the day I’d rather see him succeed than fail, any day, because if he’s doing well it means that next time I run, it’s more eyes on me, more eyes on our event.
“It’s better for Australian athletics, better for the sport in general. I wish him nothing but the best.”

Both Kennedy and Gout will draw lots of attention in the years ahead as the countdown begins to the 2032 Olympics, staged in Kennedy’s home city of Brisbane. He will be 28 when the Games roll around.

“It just feels like perfect alignment, you couldn’t have written a better story,” he says. “I’d have never said as a kid that I’d be a track and field athlete but, now that I am, and it’s a Brisbane Olympic Games, of all the places in the world, it just feels perfect and I’ll be a good age to compete. I’m obviously biased, but I think it’s going to be the best one. Hopefully I can bring my best and compete well there.”

Lots of rivers to cross, of course, before he gets to that point. But Kennedy is on the right path. He feels more at home these days on the big stage, lining up among the world’s fastest, knowing he’s now one of them.

“It feels natural,” he says. “I like running against the best people. It’s cool beating people that have achieved all these amazing things.”
The pressure will be on in Glasgow, but Kennedy feels ready for it.

“I love the big moments, I welcome the pressure,” he says. “It’s a privilege. I feel at home when I’m lining up and I know I’m not the favourite.

“I’m really annoyed every time I don’t win. Really annoyed. It’s what you train for, why you do all this off-season work – to compete against these guys. It’s exciting when you don’t know who’s going to win. What’s better than that?”