Ballarat sprinter Cooper Sherman and his Australian 4x400m teammates have missed out on a Paris Olympic berth after finishing sixth in their Olympic qualifying race at the World Relay Championships in the Bahamas.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Australian team qualified for the repechage race after finishing fourth in their heat on Sunday, Australian time, with the first and second place getters from the repechage to also win automatic Olympic qualification.
Sherman, who ran the third leg of the race, took it out hard, and at one stage bringing the Australians back into the race, but he wasn't able to sustain the run in the final 100m.
Sherman's coach Neville Down, who watched the race from Ballarat with his class at St Francis-Xavier, said he was disappointed for his young star, but he would use it as a learning tool for future international competition.
"Down the back straight he'd caught up, but I think he might have spent his bickies early and didn't have much left to finish," he said.
"He's obviously run his heart out, he'll learn from that, I haven't had a chance to speak to him yet, but I know he'll be disappointed."
The Australian men's team just scraped into the World Relay Championships field, ranked in 32nd position. They out-performed their ranking to finish 21st overall, but it wasn't enough to secure an Olympic position with the top 14 earning qualification for Paris in July.
After 400m, the Australian team of Sherman, Harrison Hunt, Luke Van Ratingen and Alex Beck sat fourth, almost a second behind the Brazilian with France and the Netherlands also ahead.
The Australians dropped a position to fifth after the second leg, were seventh after the third and would eventually finish sixth in a time of 3.04.68, slightly slower than their qualifying time of 3.30.81, which was a season's best for the team.
Sherman, the national 400m champion, was rested from the opening day of competition with the Australian team preferring to use him just for the final, however it was clear early on the race that the team was slightly off the hot pace set by the Brazilian team.
"The chances of the Australian team making the relay I think were pretty slim anyway, but I was also hoping they would have run quicker in the heat," Down said.
"There's 14 countries selected and there are still two spot available and they'll go to the next two fastest times until the end of June, but I'm not sure if Australia will chase it now.
"We'll wait until he gets home now to talk about whether he wants to chase the individual spot. He'll definitely go to Oceania championships in June as he's been selected for that. Our job is to get some training under his belt, but I know he's a very proud runner, he's confident of his own ability and proud to represent his country. He's tried his best, he's done his best, but I know he'll be disappointed with the time."
There was also heartbreak for the Australian women's 4x400m team, who were dealt a blow by appearing in the quickest of the three qualifying races.
The Australians finished fourth in their race behind Belgium, Spain and Czech Republic, but their time of a season's best time of 3.28.05 was the actually the fifth fastest of the day. Had they run that time in any other of the first two heats, they would have earned a ticket to Paris.
There was one success for Australia however, with the women's 4x100m team finishing fifth in the championship final and earning their spot into the Olympics, the first Australian women's sprint team to make the Olympics in two decades.
That team is spearheaded by Australia's fastest women Torrie Lewis, who was previously trained by Ballarat's Gerrard Keating.
