1984 -

Jared Tallent strode into history at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games - completing a rare double by winning medals in both walking events. Six days after he won bronze in the 20-kilometre race, he collected silver in the 50km event. It was the first time a male Australian track and field athlete had won two medals at a single Games in more than a century: Stan Rowley performed the feat when he won three bronze sprinting medals at the Paris Games in 1900, and Edwin Flack won gold in the 800 and 1500 metres at the first modern Games in Athens in 1896. The last female track and field athlete to do so was Raelene Boyle, with two silvers in Munich in 1972.

Tallent’s Games campaign had been overshadowed by that of his fellow-walker Nathan Deakes, who had won the 2007 world 50km championship, having set a world record for the distance earlier in the year. Deakes had been a favourite for Beijing until injury forced his withdrawal from the Australian team.

Tallent, 23, was one of six children raised on a potato farm near Ballarat, Victoria. He lost his right index finger in a potato grading machine as a toddler. He was accompanied to the Games by his fiancé, fellow walker Claire Woods, who finished 28th in the women’s 20km event. They lived in Canberra, training at the AIS under coach Brent Vallance. Aching somewhat after walking 70km in six days, Tallent said: “I’m worried I won’t be able to do my wedding dance.” The pair married after the Games in Woods’ Adelaide home suburb … a place called, appropriately enough, Walkerville.

Harry Gordon, AOC Historian