Jack Rayner had only been dedicating his life to running for about two years when he was invited to help make athletics history in 2019.
Via a sizzling 2:11.06 in his debut marathon in London, the young Victorian distance runner was asked if he would be a pacemaker for Eliud Kipchoge as the Kenyan attempted to be the first person to break two hours for a marathon.
This was like getting an invitation to fly to the moon with Neil Armstrong, or, for an athletics nut, the chance to lace up and run with Roger Bannister in the first four-minute mile race in 1954. Rayner, obviously, accepted.
“It was surreal, to be honest. Most people who even loosely follow running watched that event and are blown away by it. It captivated so many people,” Rayner said.
It’s a matter of record that Kipchoge, the undisputed GOAT of marathons, achieved his goal; finishing the specially-created race in Vienna in 1:59.40 seconds.
Of 41 pacers who helped Kipchoge in teams, running five kilometre stints, Rayner wasn’t the only Aussie. Stewart McSweyn, Brett Robinson and Pat Tiernan also flew the flag, but Rayner had the additional privilege of running in the last group. Famously, Rayner and the pacers were captured celebrating a short distance behind Kipchoge as he crosses the line.
Eliud Kipchoge approaches the finish line after running 1:159 in a marathon in 2019, with his pacemakers celebrating behind. Credit:Press Association
“When they were doing all the groups, I looked and they had me running first and last. I was like, ‘How good’,” Rayner said.
“I was just trying to do everything I could to not stuff up, which would have been a terrible look. But the job we had was quite comfortable, it wasn’t anything like Eliud running that pace for a marathon.
“Even being able to look behind and see he was still there, looking as fresh as a daisy, we knew he was under the pace when we started that last 5km section and the crowd was like nothing you’ve ever seen.
“I was super confident in his ability. He just looked so relaxed. They didn’t even brief us what to do if he was off the pace. Everyone was just so confident in him. There were tens and tens of thousands of people were lining the streets, deafening noise the whole way. Amazing.”
Brett Robinson, Pat Tiernan, Stewart McSweyn, Eliud Kipchoge and Jack Rayner celebrate after the race.
Rayner and the pacers partied the night away and that might have been that; a lifetime story to one-up mates at the pub.
But being so intimately close to an extraordinary, groundbreaking moment stuck with Rayner, and several years later, the Kipchoge effect helped the 27-year-old achieve his own slice of history.
“He is the greatest of all-time, so just to be involved in something of that magnitude was super inspiring for me,” Rayner said. “It just brought a whole new level of motivation and mindset after being in that event.”
Jack Rayner (right) going for a run on Mount Panorama with Australian teammates Stewart McSweyn and Rose Davies.Credit:Steve Christo/Athletics Australia
Rayner had high hopes for success in his Olympic debut in the marathon a year later, but after the Games were postponed for a year, injury reared its ugly head about a month out from Tokyo in 2021. Rayner suffered a stress fracture and though he started the Olympic marathon in Sapporo, he withdrew after 10km.
“I knew I was up shit creek without a paddle,” Rayner said.
“But it fuelled a whole new motivation for me when I did come back from that injury, knowing how badly I wanted to prove I was capable of racing well.”
Rayner got super fit and entered a 10,000m race early in 2022, aiming to run a qualifying time for the world championships. But as he powered through the race and felt strong, he began to realise he could do much better than that.
“I realised at 8km that I was on a really good pace and I went hell for leather for the last two km,” Rayner said.
Rayner stopped the clock at 27:15.35, breaking the Australian 10,000m record by eight seconds. It was Rayner’s personal best time for a 10km by a whopping 44 seconds. Like Kipchoge, he’d smashed his own boundaries of what was possible.
“It was incredible. I knew I was much quicker than what my PBs were showing. I surprised myself as well but it was great to show what I could do. It was a surreal experience,” Rayner said.
Rayner finished 19th at the World Championships and ninth in the Commonwealth Games but his good form continued through to last month, when he won the Australian trial for the World Cross Country Championships, to be held in Bathurst on Saturday.
This will be Rayner’s third WXC, but this time he goes into the all-terrain 10km race as Australia’s best chance in a men’s team also containing Robinson and Matthew Ramsden.
“You rarely if ever get a world champs in Australia, so with it being on home soil and having had the chance to scope it out last month, we are going to use every little of advantage,” Rayner said.
“That will come in handy. It is a pretty brutal course we do there. Hopefully when we get to the line in Bathurst, it won’t come as much of a shock. Cross-country is it’s own beast.”
In an event dominated by African athletes, no Australian male runner has ever finished higher than Rob De Castella’s sixth in 1981 and 1983.
Rayner’s best finish is 40th in 2019 and it won’t get any easier in Bathurst. The field is stacked with ridiculously fast distance runners, headed by reigning champion Joseph Cheptegei. The Ugandan holds the 10km world record of 26:11.0 – over a minute faster than Rayner’s Australian record.
“You always aim to do well but this is going to be one of the most difficult races to get on the podium in the whole world,” Rayner said. “It’s on par with the world champs or the Olympics, really. It is not easy, and if history is anything to go by, it’s quite African dominated. It’ll be tough.”
Even Cheptegei agrees. On a course World Athletics president Seb Coe rated the toughest ever made, Cheptegei believes the Bathurst field is the toughest ever assembled, with Kenya’s two-time WXC Champion Geoffrey Kamworor his main rival. To highlight the challenge facing Rayner, that pair were once training partners with Kipchoge.
