Patrick Tiernan

America-based Toowoomba-raised Pat Tiernan is one of a group of rising Australian distance stars. His athletics journey started when his primary school teacher in Toowoomba saw him running one morning and asked if he wanted to join his squad. A strong junior career in Australia was honed during his college years in America at one of the great US distance running institutions Villanova.

While studying mathematics and economics, he compiled an impressive record of results, including winning the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) cross country – the first Australian to achieve this in 56 years.

Things had really shifted for Pat in late 2016, when he won a medal in the NCAA 5000m, represented Australia at the Rio Olympics, won the NCAA cross country and in December the Zatopek 10,000m. It was merely a launching pad into his 2017 campaign where over a barnstorming 63 days he placed an outstanding 13th at the world cross country and ran massive personal bests at 3000m, 5000m and 10,000m – placing him into the top-4 Australians of all-time in all three events. At just 22, he was now already one of the best all-round distance runners in Australian history. 

Over the next couple of years there was some injury and reassessment either side of an appearance at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. In 2019 Tiernan proposed to fellow athlete Angel Piccirillo at Philadelphia Zoo. 

In mid-2019 he was back in terrific form recording a 5000m personal best and qualifying for the 2019 World Championships and Tokyo Olympics. At the 2019 World Championships he didn’t progress out of the heats, however, three months later ran a terrific 27:31.20 at Zatopek to finish seven seconds behind Stewart McSweyn who broke the national record (27:23.80).

After a quiet year in the COVID-effected 2020, he finished the year strong breaking McSweyn’s national 10,000m record clocking 27:22.55 in California and being named in the Olympic team for Tokyo - his second Games.

In Tokyo on the first night of Olympic track and field competition he was among the leaders in the 10,000m for much of the tactical race. Pat was so composed throughout the race with a top-8 position looking possible. He looked capable of lifting on the final two laps even when the pace had improved dramatically, but he surprised many when he started to labour slightly. He stumbled at the top of the home straight before collapsing with the finish in sight, picking himself up and wandering over the final 50-metres to ensure he finished the race.

He placed 18th in a season best time of 28:35.06. Post-race Pat was wheeled off by officials as he shook his head, and whilst the final lap may not have gone to plan – he delivered a historic Olympic performance.

"It was definitely hot. I was prepared for that. I've been doing heat and humidity training and I thought I was in a good space for that. I thought I hydrated well but obviously something wasn't right, we'll aim to learn from that,’ Pat said.

"It's the Olympics, I've been waiting for this for five years and I got close. I think it was 180 metres to go when I collapsed the first time, and you don't stop when you've only got that far to go. It's a long way to come to fall, literally... you just have to get up and try and keep going."

In 2022 Pat moved his focus to the road running a brilliant 60:55 time in the half marathon in January 2022 ahead of his marathon debut in Chicago, where he ran an impressive 2:11.02. But there were lots of changes going on for Pat, from a new coach and team to injuries. 2023 was lowkey, including withdrawing from the Australian team for the Budapest world championships where he was scheduled to run the marathon.

But he was building and in January 2024 in Houston took a shot at qualifying for the Olympics. He ran 25 seconds under the standard to clock 2:07.45 elevating him to number two in Australian history. He was also just 14 seconds outside the Australian record.

“I ran better than expected. I’m pleased with 4-5 months of solid training and nice to have an uninterrupted build up,” he said.

He reflected on the years since Tokyo.

“The last few years have been a little rough, but I think we have been playing with those things to figure out what works and what doesn’t. We are figuring that out now and are a lot closer than we were in Tokyo. We now have six months to build on that (towards Paris)."