Montag’s brilliant silver win in Budapest
Maccabi Victoria Athletics Club life member Jemima Montag has brought home Australia’s first women’s 20km race walking world championships medal since Kerry Saxby-Junna’s bronze in 1999.
In chasing her goal of earning Australia’s first women’s 20km race walking world championships medal since Kerry Saxby-Junna’s bronze in 1999, Maccabi Victoria Athletics Club (MVAC) life member Jemima Montag’s preparation for last Sunday’s 2023 edition in Budapest involved months of getting her body physically ready to achieve that, but arguably more importantly, her mind.
The 25-year-old full-time medicine student had shown the world she had the potential to finish on the podium in recent years, having placed 10th at the World Athletics Championships in Doha in 2019, sixth in her Olympics debut in Tokyo and fourth at last year’s worlds in Oregon.
But she wasn’t quite ready in those majors to take the risk of joining, or creating, a breakaway move.
That all changed on a warm morning on Budapest’s street circuit last Sunday and the result was a world championship silver medal for Montag, in an Australian and Oceania record time – by 11 seconds – of 1 hour, 27 minutes and 16 seconds.
She was in a lead group of eight until just after the 15km mark, when she saw Spain’s Maria Perez up the pace significantly to break away and made the brave decision to join her.
Perez proved too fast in the end, reaching the finish line in 1:26.51, but Montag was rewarded with second place in a world-class field of 49, and was 10 seconds faster than reigning Olympic champion, Italian Antonella Palmisano, who came third.
Montag immediately embraced Perez, before the effort she’d exerted in those last 5km took its toll and she took a moment on the floor to recover.
She then got to share her career-high achievement, roadside, with her parents Amanda and Ray, her sister Piper and a mini Maccabi cheer squad that included MVAC president Len Bogatin and his wife Yvette, Harry Procel and David Grace.
And as always during her races since the Tokyo Olympics, Montag wore, as a source of deep inspiration, a bracelet formed from a necklace that she and her two sisters were given by her late paternal grandmother Judith, a Holocaust survivor.
“I think that she is on my arm during the race,” Montag said.
Moments after the race, Montag told Athletics Australia, “I’ve learned from the last few world championships and the Olympics, that when the move is made at about 15km, it’s the winning move.
“In the last three majors, I haven’t had the training evidence, or the self-belief … but when speaking to my psych, the idea was just to be willing to hurt in that last 5km.
“Having the willingness to feel some discomfort, to take a risk and to be vulnerable, because it can be scary to go with that winning move.
“Today I just kept saying, well, why not me … it was 16 years of experience, all clicking.”
Montag said that being able to share the moment with her family, “and to see the emotion on their faces, is like nothing else”.
She also drew on the powerful message behind her “Girls Play On” project being implemented in schools and junior sport clubs.
“Multiple times during the race, I was telling myself to ‘play on’, as in, just keep going!”
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