Four Paralympians, an Olympic race walker and a World Under 20 record holder sounds like the start of a bad joke, but they are just some of the Australians you could find calling Flagstaff home in May, breathing the Arizona altitude with more in common than first thought.
The sporting world may still be relishing the tales of Paris 2024, but the stars of the show are already marching towards Los Angeles 2028. For a group of Australian endurance athletes, that means preparing at the altitude mecca of Flagstaff, Arizona.
One of those is Jaryd Clifford, the stubborn competitor who has grown into an icon of Para-athletics down under, with the dual world champion experiencing mixed results training in Flagstaff historically – from world titles to stress fractures.
He says his fifth venture to the glorified air has been his best yet alongside Paralympic teammates Reece Langdon, Angus Hincksman and Annabelle Colman:
“With the Los Angeles Paralympics being so close to Flagstaff, I think it’s a super important skill to learn – executing a training camp. For the younger guys, it’s about getting used to the altitude and training smart so that you can actually benefit from the fitness gains,” Clifford says.
“When we are in Flagstaff now, it’s not just for the races in the next couple of months, it’s with LA 2028 in mind.”
Clifford describes a program that includes track sessions with World Under 20 record holder Cameron Myers and Olympian Jye Edwards, jogging with race walker Declan Tingay, mentoring from Linden Hall and flybys from Olympic silver medallist Jessica Hull – all supported by Australian Athletics.
“It’s athletics as its best, when the Olympic and Paralympic team can go on a camp together and work towards different goals, but the same goals,” Clifford says.
“We love training with those guys, but I guess them seeing how we go about what we do is quite powerful as well. Maybe they haven’t trained with someone with a vision impairment or an intellectual impairment before, and in my mind understanding kind of equals appreciation.”
It’s a vision long in the works from Australian Athletics Physiology Network Lead Avish Sharma, who is the brains behind the planning and operation of the camp, working to set an atmosphere of collaboration.
“It was pretty obvious that we had heaps of our athletes doing the same thing but spread out all over the place. That was the first motivator, to do a better job of streamlining it and bringing more people together,” Sharma says.
“Across our endurance cohort, we are trying to systematically get people to do repeated exposures to altitude. Everyone is in it for the red blood cells, but the more you do it, the faster you acclimatsie and the more effective the adaption becomes.”
From simple things like calling splits and taking lactates on training days, Sharma’s role extended to providing guidance to athletes on training intensities for maximum benefit, with the altitude of over 2000m having a significant impact on performance – felt every step by Clifford.
“You pretty much walk up the stairs and are struggling to breathe. Your resting heart rate overnight is much higher. Running is harder, but so is recovery between sessions. You kind of have to throw the ego and the watch away,” Clifford says.
Set to test his wheels over 1500m in Nice, France tonight Clifford will ramp up his season before heading back to Flagstaff to prepare for the rest of the year, which will culminate in the 2025 World Para Athletics Championships in New Delhi this September.
“I was invited to Nice by the same guy who runs the Monaco Diamond League. I have forked out a fair bit of my own money to come here because it could be the first step on a long road towards having Para-athletics front and centre on that circuit,” Clifford says.
The Paralympic star will be confident in his preparation after Linden Hall punched in a 14:43.61 performance over 5000m to qualify for the World Athletics Championships fresh off the camp, with Abbey Caldwell and Jessica Hull also set to race this weekend at Grand Slam Track in Philadelphia.
As for tactics? Clifford has been picking the brains of one of the sport’s youngest stars in Cameron Myers:
“He led the National final and won it; I led the Paralympic final and lost it. I was sitting there at dinner asking him how he did it, how it felt at different points.”
Clifford will race at Meeting Nikaia in Nice tonight, a World Athletics Continental Tour Bronze meet.
By Lachlan Moorhouse, Australian Athletics
Posted 31/5/2025
