Aidan Murphy

BIOGRAPHY

In summer of 2021/22 Aiden Murphy burst onto the athletics scene with a series of dazzling sprint performances. In February he broke the Australian junior 200m record. His impressive 100m and 400m times stamp him as one of the best junior all-round sprinters in Australian history.

Selected for the 200m and 4x100m relay for the World U20 Championships, he also gathered sufficient World Athletics ranking points to start in the 200m at the World Championships. At the World Juniors he missed the 200m final by 0.01 seconds and one place.

A senior athlete in 2023, he ran a 100m PB (10.33) and was close to his bests in the 200m (20.54) and 400m (46.33). He collected sufficient 200m World Ranking points to be selected on his second world championships team for Budapest 2023.

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It was obvious from a young age Aiden Murphy had speed. “When I played football (soccer) during lunch times as a primary school kid, I found that I could out-run most, if not all of my classmates. My mum recognised my ability at the time.”

However his mother, Tania Van Heer-Murphy, a Commonwealth Games medallists in the 100m, delayed any introduction to athletics until much later. She encouraged Aiden to try other sports like surf lifesaving, BMX, tennis, football, and water polo.

After a stint training with Tania, when he was 12 (in 2015) Aiden started training properly for athletics. “I trained with a squad belonging to Saint Peter’s College.” He would later attend the college on scholarship, where the coach in charge at the college was Tony Keynes, the current President of Athletics SA.
After a few years of hamstring injuries, before his 16th birthday (in 2019), he was already showing promise with times of 10.96 (100m) and 21.80 (200m). Before the 2019/20 summer season was shut down due to COVID, he also clocked an impressive 48.68 over 400m.

In early 2021, now aged 17, his progress was solid, with sprint times of 10.86/21.30/47.79. His 200m time was the most impressive and was achieved when placing second in the National U20 200m Championship. He missed the World U20 standard by just 0.02 seconds and selection in the Australian team which didn’t travel to the World u20 Championships.

The results to-date showed little of what was to come over the summer of 2021/22 as he demolished his PBs and set records galore. Aiden said that his progress was the product of 10-months of unhindered training under the guidance of Victorian-based coach and Olympian Peter Fitzgerald.

Before the Christmas of 2021, Aiden had already run significant PBs of 10.64/20.64/46.31. Early in 2022 he ran 10.35 in the 100m and 20.41 in the 200m – the later breaking the Australian U20 record and becoming the seventh fastest open Australian.  He was now one of the best all-round Australian junior sprinters of all-time. In the 100m he was top-10 Australian junior all-time and in the 400m top-15 Australian junior all-time. He won the open Australian 200m title in April and Oceania title in June in the hope to earn sufficient World Athletics ranking points to qualify for the World Championships. In Eugene he was sixth in his 200m heat. It was a bonus competing at the world championships as the focus was two weeks later at the World U20 Championships where he progressed to the 200m semi-final and missed the final by one place and 0.01 seconds. During the year he also ran on two Australian record under-20 4x100m relays.

His heroes are the two fastest junior 200m sprinters of all-time Erriyon Knighton and Usain Bolt, but not only for their athletics prowess.
“Both Erriyon and Bolt have overcome extreme mental and physical barriers at an incredibly young age. This resonates with me as I have always been the youngest in anything I do. For example, halfway through year 1 in primary school I was pushed up a year and forced to develop faster than an average child would be expected to. Ever since then, I have always surrounded myself with people that are older and/or more knowledgeable than me in order to mature faster.”

Hobbies: I am a gamer (online shooters and such)…Sporting ambition: To be the fastest man to ever come out of Australia, and to be taken seriously on an international level. Many people think that this title belongs to the person whom holds the record for the quickest 100m dash, but I am not someone that believes that…Education: second year Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Civil) - Structural Engineering Major at Adelaide Uni…Occupation: Gym & Group Fitness Instructor… Biggest challenge  faced: Overcoming pre-comp anxiety… Interesting facts: 1.94m tall, his mother Tania Van Heer-Murphy was a great all-round Australian sprinter in the ‘90s. She won two relay gold and a 100m bronze medal at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, a silver medal at the World Indoors, made a World Championships semi-final and competed at three World Cups…Enjoyment of competing: Personally, I enjoy battling my body’s natural tendencies when dealing with high speed (i.e. instability and the production of lactic acid).

@ August 2023 david.tarbotton@athletics.org.au

World Athletics Profile https://worldathletics.org/athletes/australia/aidan-murphy-14815259