Torrie Lewis

Torrie Lewis, Australia’s fastest woman, started her sporting journey with gymnastics as the focus, with just a little athletics on the side.

“Once I quit gymnastics, I was looking for another sport to do and as I was already good at running I decided to focus my time more on athletics,” she said. “I’d been running through the school system since I was eight, but only started seeing athletics as my sport when I was 11.”

Once she made the switch, Torrie almost immediately began setting records and winning national titles.

Born in England to a Scottish mother and a Jamaican/Indian father, Torrie moved to Newcastle (in NSW) with her mum Wendy when she was six and started running with her school, St Paul’s Primary.

At 12, she started training by correspondence with coach Gerrard Keating of Ballarat and within a year she was winning titles. By the age of 14 she had clocked 11.91 for 100m and 24.34 for 200m.

When her mum got a new job in Brisbane in 2020, the pair moved north and Torrie thrived, despite training through the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The whole of 2020 I trained by myself after school with the programs Gerrard would send through,” she said.

“In my first race in Brisbane as a 15-year-old, I raced Riley Day in the 100m and won. That gave me the confidence and motivation to continue training by myself through correspondence (as Gerrard was still in NSW).”

Torrie broke the Australian under-16 100m record, clocking 11.57, and ran 23.51 for the 200m.

After her coach moved to Brisbane, she won the national under-17 sprint double in 2021 and she was called into the national senior relay team. In March 2022, the team clocked 43.15m, the third-fastest in Australian history, while Torrie’s individual times continued to plummet.

Selected to compete in the 2022 World U20 Championships, Torrie tore her hamstring nine days before she was due to fly out. “I felt I was in the fastest shape I had ever been in,” she said.

“Although, I was devastated … my body was obviously telling me that it needed something more. That something more was gym, as I had never really had a gym program before this and just did physio exercises about once a week for 30 minutes. So this injury forced me to start from the beginning in terms of block work, running technique and gym strength. My progress in terms of training load have been slowly increasing as I get older and now with strength from gym and an appreciation for being healthy.” 

Under new coach Andrew Iselin, Torrie returned to action for the 2023 season and started out with a few handicap races on grass in Tasmania. “My hamstring stood the tough test of the gift races and I knew it was ready,” she said.

In April 2023, she won the national open sprint double while still only 18 - the second youngest female to ever achieve this.

After making her senior international debut at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, Torrie started 2024 by breaking the 10-year-old national 100m record, clocking 11.10 in Canberra. Also over that summer she set a 200m PB of 22.94 and in April she won the 200m at the Xiamen Diamond League in China.

She twice anchored the Australian 4x100m relay team to national records, the later at the World Relays Championships in May, where Australia secured a place at the Paris Olympics. 

Now well on the way to becoming a bonafide superstar in world athletics, Torrie still gets a kick out of running fast.

“I prefer training to competition,” she said. “But my favourite part of competition is either overtaking someone or when you are neck-and-neck with someone and can see them out the corner of your eye and being able to get slightly in front. So basically, I enjoy the pure racing components of competition.”