World Athletics Championships: Peter Bol opens up about his stunning comeback this year after a change in priorities with a new family
After being badly beaten in the heats at the Paris Olympics, many doubted Peter Bol would get back. But the 31-year-old opens up on what’s driving his stunning comeback this year.
Peter Bol never doubted he would get back. Many did.
The sight of the 800m champion languishing at the back of the pack in the heats of the Paris Olympics was hard to watch, particularly given the last time he was on that stage in Tokyo three years earlier, he’d been a whisker away from a bronze medal.
Yet it was just two months after Paris when the 31-year-old realised he wasn’t done.
“I was training by myself and was really enjoying it,” Bol recalled this week. “Then I was like, ‘Man, I am in good shape mentally’ which translates to physically.
“Because I have been training for the past 10 years, the muscle memory is there so physically you’re always in great shape and it comes back pretty quickly.
“But it was that realisation that I was in really great shape mentally, I had a baby coming, I’ve got a family and there is more purpose to life … so let’s go compete.”
Fast forward to April this year and Bol is back in his hometown of Perth with his extended family, including his finance Mahtut and daughter Reyna in the stands.
He goes to the front early in the national 800m final and proceeds to deliver the best performance of his career, clocking 1min43.79sec to smash the Australian record.
“At the nationals I ran 1:43 pretty easily and that is what I’d wanted to do for 10 years,” Bol says. “I had run the fastest time by an Australian in Australia and it was at home in Perth in front of my family.
“I think that was the greatest moment for me in track and I have done some incredible things, winning a medal at the Commonwealth Games, the Olympic final and running 1:42 in Monaco (in July) but nothing beats what I did in Perth.”
The Monaco Diamond League race came during a European stint which was much shorter than normal because of his new change of priorities.
Bol signalled he will be a factor at next week’s world championships in Tokyo with that performance in Monaco where he finished fourth in one of the fastest 800m races in history, lowering his Australian record again to 1:42.55sec.
“I have always kind of been good in that sense that track has not always been the most important thing to me,” he said. “The people around me have been super important.
“I went to Europe for three weeks and it was going to be three weeks no matter what happened. Then I got back and got an invite to the Lausanne Diamond League but I was like, ‘I’m not leaving, I’m pretty happy here’. I would rather stay home with my family.
“A few years ago I used to be on buses driving through Belgium just to get a race opportunity and now I was getting the race opportunity of a lifetime and I was like, ‘Nah, I’m good’.”
Bol knows he learnt a lot from the worst period of his career – the 2023 drugs saga of which he was later cleared – but rather than be bitter, sees it as part of the journey to getting him to his happy place today.
“It’s really tough for someone like me who does the sport out of pure enjoyment and if you’re not enjoying it, even though you’re not physically injured, you’re still injured in a mental sense and that is not a great way to be running,” he said.
“Everyone says the strength then is you should always keep pushing but I think the strength there is pulling back and taking a break because that is what you needed to do.
“It’s strange and something you’re not used to but it’s just the way life throws things at you. Then you kind of reflect on it, ‘Was that actually a bad thing?’ Maybe you needed that growth period and the only way to get that growth period is through different circumstances.
“Going through injuries and not enjoying it … learning to move through that and you have to also understand that you do really love this thing because among all this chaos, you’re still finding time to do it.”
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He’s excited to return to Tokyo knowing he’s at the peak of his powers but it’s what happens after the championships which has him just as excited.
“Absolutely anything can happen, absolutely anything particularly with the nature of the 800 at the moment,” Bol says, “I looked at the rankings and 15th in the world is running 1:42, I’m in the top five, but years ago you’d be leading the world if you ran 1:42 but now it’s 15th.
“I’m pumped to be getting over there, I’m going there to compete and whatever happens happens but my family will be with me and we’re going for a holiday afterwards. And that’s just as important.”
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